Real Arms Around Me
by Empathist
Summary: Brendan and Ste. Begins in Dublin in December 2012, and follows the show's storyline right up until Brendan left in March 2013.
1. Chapter 1

You're getting used to this bed. You've slept a few nights in it now since you came home from England, if you could call it coming home; if home was just a place, and not the people who had your heart.

The bed feels different this morning, as you move from sleep into waking. There's a dip in the mattress beside you, someone's weight there, someone's skin warm against your arm. It's not that lad you picked up yesterday, or who picked you up: that lad with a caustic turn of phrase and a particular English accent, and a streak of kindness after you'd had him that took you by surprise. No, not him. You didn't fall asleep with him.

And now you remember, and you feel a prickling of sweat under your arms, a flush of panic not about what you've done, but about what you came close to doing. You could have lost him for ever. But you didn't. You didn't, and you concentrate now on your breathing to calm down, and you remember how he asked you why you were here, and how for once in your life you got it right.

"Cos I love you... Cos I can't live my life without you. I love you, Steven." Your words sounded pale to you, as if they might not make it through the cold air to touch him. But then he answered you, his voice stronger than yours somehow, and somehow sounding like he was surprised, not by what you'd told him but by what he was telling you: "I love you too."

His face was damp with tears and snot, and his lips were cold and the inside of his mouth was warm, and his hands felt sure and possessive as he took hold of your face, and your hotel wasn't far away from that bridge.

The bed was unmade, and you saw him look at it, and you felt a tide of disgust rise in you, and you said to him, "I'm sorry." And he looked puzzled, as if he thought for a second it was, "I'm sorry, this is a bad idea; I'm sorry, you need to go." But then he got it, and shrugged and told you, "It don't matter now, does it?" And all of a sudden you felt weary. The energy that had brought you running back from the bridge with him, had all but left you.

He looked at you, and took off his coat.

When you'd imagined this – when it was never going to happen because God wouldn't let it, and because the boy was married now, and when imagining it was what you did to punish yourself – you'd imagined a frantic ripping off of clothes and a pawing at flesh, a taking of what ought to be yours, a rushing to get everything you could from him. Only when it became real, you didn't do that. What you did last night was, you made love with him.

You sit up slowly, trying not to disturb him; you lean back against the headboard and look at him as he sleeps. The bright Winter sun is pouring through the open curtains and bleaching him of any imperfections – except there aren't any, not a flaw, not a mark. You really must have been gentle with him.

He looks like an angel, all glowing golden skin and softness, the shadows of his eyelashes making them appear even longer. His lips are slightly parted and you hold your breath for a few seconds to listen to his breathing, and watch the rise and fall of his chest, and then you breathe again, slowly in time with him. His face is unlined, untroubled, innocent in sleep. You'd be scared to touch him if you weren't comprehensively aware that his instincts are as carnal as your own. If he's an angel, he's the fallen kind.

Still, you don't touch him except to smooth his hair where it's been mussed up from your fingers raking it and your fist gripping it. He'll be needing his sleep, won't he, after the day he had yesterday. He put everything on the line for you, his whole future, and you feel scared suddenly, just like he said you were, because what if you're not strong enough? What if you're not as brave as him? Because this young man here in your bed, as fragile as he looks, has more courage than anyone you know. He must have, to take on a man like you, to come back to you, to put aside what everyone else will think of him; to sleep with a man like you who could snap him in two, a man who's only ever a step away from the darkness. A man like you doesn't have a long lifespan: there are too many enemies, too many risks. It's only here, in this moment, that you realise how much this didn't matter to you before, because now everything's changed and it does matter. You want a future now because you want one with him, you've got a lot of wasted time to make up. You want to be with him for ever, and for the first time you care that your for ever might not be for long.

And then you remember what you've put on the line for him in return for his faith: your fear and your heart are in his hands, and they're good hands, strong hands, and you've got to believe that this is it now. If this isn't it, for ever, then nothing is.

You're hungry: starving. Maybe that's why you feel shaky. You and Steven had better things to do all night than eat. You climb carefully out of bed, pull on some clothes, take a glance at him, and head out of the hotel to the nearest takeaway. You try to think when you last had a meal. It was when you were with that lad yesterday, wasn't it? You grabbed a bite to eat in the pub. What was his name? _McQueen_. Jesus, what were the chances? Maybe you've got God all wrong. Maybe He's not the angry one of your childhood, sitting in judgement over you, deciding how soon to send you into the eternal fires of Hell. Maybe He's more the Mount Olympus kind, manipulating the mortals like mice in a lab, watching them squirm just for the craic.

He was alright, the McQueen boy. You liked his accent and you liked his sarcasm, they were enough like Steven's to remind you of him. Not bad in the sack either, once you'd won the tussle over who was going to fuck who. He'd suggested he wanted to top you – what he was used to, you guessed – and you'd laughed and disabused him of the notion. You gave him a good time anyhow, and finished him off with a handjob that had his eyes rolling back in his head. And then when Steven arrived you remembered – like you'd always known ever since the day you first took him to bed with the bruises fading on his healing ribs, and you saw what he had, the trust of a child and the heart of a lion, and he gave them both to you – that sex without love leaves you hollow.

When you get back to your hotel room with coffee and breakfast and condoms, Steven is awake, and you know the conclusion he must have jumped to when he woke up and found you'd gone. You feel ashamed that he'd still think that you'd leave him, but why wouldn't he? You're going to have to prove yourself.

You make a joke of it, "Not getting rid of me that easily, Steven," and you put the coffees down and shrug off your coat and sit down on the bed. Steven reckons he's dreaming, and he doesn't mean about getting breakfast in bed, he means about you.

You've eaten half the breakfast on your way back from the takeaway, and now you start on his half. Well, he's smaller than you, the skinny little bastard, so he doesn't need so much to sustain him.

He gets a text from Leanne, the girl who's minding his kids, and he feels guilty. You want to stay here in Dublin and have him all to yourself for a little longer, but it's a no-brainer. You can't keep a father from his kids, not a father who loves them in the right way, a father whose kids love him back. You tell him you'll sort it, book flights for you both for this afternoon.

"We'll be home in a few hours," you say.

"We?"

"Yes, we."

This is what commitment feels like. It feels good.

You tell him you'll show him the sights in the time you've got left. You climb onto the bed and straddle him, and lean down and kiss him, softly, and the way he's looking at you is kind of shy, kind of filthy; like he's all yours. You offer him anything he wants: "I'm your man... whatever the pleasure..." And you are – you're all his.

"Guinness," he says, and you repeat it back at him just to clarify. Okay then. That's what he wants to try, and you've promised him anything, so...

You sit back on his thighs. His hand comes up, his fingers in the waistband of your black jeans, his knuckles against your skin under your vest.

You get off him and take the lid off his coffee and hand him the paper cup. He looks affronted that you're giving him coffee instead of cock; it makes you smile.

"Drink up before it gets cold."

He sits up and takes it in both hands and sips it. Last time you bought him a coffee, he rejected it. That time, he didn't want anything from you – well, except your eighty grand. That time, he wanted Douglas. You wonder if he's remembering that too, because he's making an effort, he's draining the last dregs from this cup that you've given him.

You're glad you remembered to put in his four sugars. He'll need the energy.

By the time he's finished, your clothes are on the floor and his eyes are on you. You take the empty cup from him and put it back on the table, and you bend down and kiss the sweet coffee from his lips, and then you pull back the covers.

You were wrong about there not being a mark on him. Your teeth have left a sludgy bruise on his hip bone, making the edge of his tattoo indistinct, and when you part his legs to kneel between them there are bite marks on the smooth skin on the insides of his thighs. You trace them with your thumbs and press to test if they're tender: they must be, because he flinches, so you kiss where you hurt him. You've never wanted to kiss anyone as much as you want to kiss him, and you do it now, working your way up his body, lingering at his nipples until he reaches for your face and draws you up to his mouth, impatient. You feel his legs wrap around you, his ankles crossed, his heels behind your arse pulling you onto him. You rub your cock against his, and thrust your tongue deep into his mouth. His hands are in your hair, and you couldn't break this kiss if you wanted to.

You use lots of lube. It'll help soothe where he's sore from last night, and he loves it, the feel of your hand massaging it onto him, slipping over his perineum, your fingers working inside him. His hips rise off the bed, writhing like a cat as you stroke between his legs. Your cock is so ready it hurts, but you give his a bit of attention first with both hands and a slick of lube. You grip his shaft firmly, and with your thumbs you tease the tip until he grips your wrists to stop you, and looks into your eyes and says, "For fucksake Brendan, are you gonna fuck me or what?" And you laugh, and he laughs, and he lifts his legs and you manhandle them onto your shoulders.

He opens for you and you push in a couple of inches before he reflexively tightens around you. You shift a little to find the angle which you know – you remember – will allow the deepest possible penetration; you let him breathe the resistance out, and when you feel him relax you slide in rapidly and jolt against him as you hit home.

You let him set the pace, and at first the only movement is the spasming of the muscles inside him, then you start to rock with him, and you can't tell if your body is taking its rhythm from his cries or if his cries are led by your body's rhythm.

He's saying your name, over and over, panting it out, and he's looking into your eyes like you always had him do; and then he flings his hands onto the pillow either side of his head, and he's biting his lip, and you know what he wants. Your arms are holding your weight but you move them now so that the whole weight of your body is taken by his legs as your chest bears down on them. He's more or less folded in half now from the hips, as flexible as ever, and now that your hands are free you do what he is wanting you to do, you take hold of his wrists and pin them to the bed, and fuck him, and fuck him. He's tougher than he looks, this boy. This _man_. You can take some of the credit for the toughness, and some of the blame.

Last night you almost asked him what it was like with Douglas, what it was that they _did_. Almost, but in the end you didn't, because what does it matter? You've both got pasts. What you know for sure is that Steven didn't get this from him, he didn't get to abdicate control, he didn't get to enjoy being shown who was boss, even though you both know it's something of an illusion: it's what Steven wants, and what Steven wants from you, you give him. Who's boss?

You hold him when you're both finished. You're on a high, both of you, and you grin at each other stupidly as you come down.

"Want a bath, Steven? I'll run you one."

You go and have a shower then run him a bath and go back and tell him it's ready. He gets up and stretches, and as he passes you, you stop him with a hand on his chest; you feel the beat of his heart and you tell him, "I love you, okay?"

"I know." He smiles and leans up to kiss you, and you're smiling too, and he says into your mouth, "Love you too."

You watch him walk into the bathroom, and you think to yourself, _Am I dreaming?_


	2. Chapter 2

**Note** As the first chapter was so fluffy, this is just to warn you that this chapter isn't.

* * *

This bed is your own, but tonight it's felt like a hostile place – a lonely place – and you've barely slept. You've been alert to the sounds in the house, any change from the familiar, and by morning you're not sure any more which sounds you're used to and which are new and different. Each creak or footstep above your head, each running of a tap or opening and closing of a door sets your heart racing.

Your bedroom door is bolted on the inside.

Did you conjure him up by talking about him? And was that only yesterday, when you sat with Steven on the jetty in Dublin and spoke of your childhood, and Seamus's name passed your lips for the first time in years? You took courage from Steven's presence by your side and returned to the scene of the crime – one of the scenes of one of the crimes – and stood in that ghost of a pub and invoked the past, and Steven broke the spell that Seamus had cast on you.

"All that's left of the past now is just dust, look," he said, "Yeah? It just breaks away." And he broke a glass and gave you the power back, and you – both of you together – smashed and trashed that bar, and you hadn't thought you could love him more than you already did, but it turned out, you could. You caught him and you kissed him as if your life depended on it, and he matched you, grab for grab, kiss for kiss, and you threw off your coats, and cold as it was you dragged his jumper off him, and his T-shirt, because you needed to feel his skin, and you bit into his bare shoulder and scored your fingertips up and down his back. And then you fell to your knees in front of him in the rubble and the dust, and you kissed his belly, and you fumbled to undo his trousers so he undid them for you, and you strafed his cock with your tongue and you palmed his balls, and you sucked him til you'd emptied him.

He slid to the floor, his back against the bar, and he kissed you as you knelt still in front of him; and he unbuckled your belt and unbuttoned and unzipped you, and he said, "Go on." And you jerked yourself off til you came spattering onto his shivering chest.

You buckled up again, sat back and got your breath back. He started to get up.

"Where you going?" You stopped him, your hand on his wrist tighter than it needed to be.

"Find something to, you know, clean meself up."

"Don't clean it off," you told him, and he sat back down, and he smiled, "Okay," and when he put his clothes back on they went on over your cum as it dried on his skin. He laughed as he dressed: probably thought you were mental, but you didn't care. It was time to take your lover home.

You thought you'd laid the ghost in that place, but you hadn't. All you did was chase it away to here, and now your father is asleep upstairs, here in this house that doesn't feel like home any more.

You need some air. You get dressed quietly in your running clothes and trainers. You unbolt your door and open it silently, and listen: the house is still, and you go out. You stop for a piss in the alley because you couldn't risk going upstairs in the house to the bathroom in case Seamus woke up, and even as you do it you feel ashamed, because men who do to children what Seamus did to you, wouldn't try anything once you'd grown up, would they? Except you think, Seamus didn't do it to you because you were a child, he did it because you were you.

You run. You run hard until all that you know is the sound of the blood rushing in your head and the thump of your feet on the road, and the pain as your lungs threaten to burst.

When you get back there's still no sign of life in the house. Cheryl's probably having a lie-in after that pink Champagne she had with you and Steven, and whatever else she drank with her dad. And Seamus was never an early riser, especially if he'd had a drink, which was most days. So you go upstairs and you take a shower, a long one, and you _think_. You're stronger than this, aren't you? You're a grown man, and you're not going to be driven to hiding in your own home. That's what you tell your reflection as you shave. The face that looks back at you is not the face of a child, nor of a frightened man.

You open the cabinet to put away your razor, and as you close it he's there in the mirror, Seamus, behind you. He's silent like a spectre and you freeze as he nears you, and you feel his eyes on you, and you don't try to get away because it's always worse when you do.

He leaves you alone. You hear him go back to his room – Lynsey's room – and you bolt down the stairs and back to your bedroom and you get dressed. You put a suit on. You're in charge in a suit. You button your shirt right up to your throat.

:::::::

Cheryl's in her element. She loves her daddy and she's acting like a little wife, like when she used to fetch him his slippers and his whiskey. She makes you sit down opposite him, and you watch him spooning thick red jam onto his toast. It's got seeds in it, you can see them from here.

Seamus says something that tells you that he had a good look at you in the bathroom: "You're in fine shape."

You can out-stare anyone, but he out-stares you, and you can't breathe, it's like you're face down on a pillow; and you stand up and you go out, anywhere, just out.

You thought it was gone, all this. You learnt when you were eight, nine years old that you could disconnect, put yourself somewhere else in your head. Your dad helped with that: he put something into your hand, one of your little toy cars, and he told you to squeeze it tight, and you did, you concentrated on its sharp angles digging into your hand, and you told yourself that that was the only pain you were feeling. After the first few times you didn't need the car any more, you just had to imagine it. And the rest of the time, the times in between, you didn't think about it, and you haven't thought about it, not for years and years, except when something's made you. And he's making you now, Seamus is. He's torn away your protection and he's infected your life again; what he did in the past is bleeding into the present. And your future, the one you suddenly started to hope for when you came together with Steven at long, long last in that night and day in Dublin: that future feels threatened now.

Steven finds you sitting by the fountain in the village. He's buzzing, making plans for the day, but you hardly hear what he's saying. You snap at him, because he's acting like nothing's changed since you last saw each other yesterday. Only, how could he know that it has? So you tell him, it's your dad; and he thinks that's in the past now, that Seamus can't hurt you any more, because you put it to rest in that wreck of a pub yesterday, just like you thought you had. He puts his hand on your shoulder and it gives you strength.

"He's here," you tell him. "He's here."

He's practical, Steven is. He doesn't over-think. He suggests you tell your father the truth about what you are, but he knows it's tough, and whatever you decide to do, he'll stand by you. You look at him: you can see in his face his love for you, and you can't believe your luck. And then you look beyond him, and over by the deli you gave to your lover, you see your father, and you get up and dart behind a tree out of his sight, and you beckon to Steven to come to you because you need him out of Seamus's sights too. And you see Steven's face. He looks as if he can't believe what he's seeing, and so you see yourself through his eyes: a grown man, hiding from your dad behind a tree. But Steven doesn't laugh at you. He doesn't tell you to get a grip. He supports you, says you don't have to rush things for him.

"I'm not doing it for you," you tell him, "I'm doing it for us."

You're going to go over to Seamus and tell him the truth now. No more hiding, no more shame.

Well, not _right_ now. Because right now, Steven is standing in touching distance of you, and he lightens your darkness and lightens your burden, and he's hot as fuck, this man of yours. So you smile at him and he catches your thought as you think it and smiles back, and you kiss his smile and keep on kissing him under that tree.

:::::::

You're going to tell Seamus, swear to God.

He's by the flower shop now. Cheryl's around too, but she goes off somewhere, so you tell him you've got something to say, and it's like he knows it already, and you wonder if he always has.

"Spit it out," he tells you, "_Brenda_."

You feel nauseous, and you say, "Nothing," and Cheryl's there again but she goes off to cook a family meal for you and your dad. And then he's coming towards you, and he's standing close enough that you can smell the smoke on his breath, and you remember watching his cigarette burning gently on your bedroom window ledge where he rested it carefully til he finished with you.

"Remember, you're a Brady," Seamus says, and you've heard this speech before. "Everything you do – everything you are – reflects on me. You're not gonna bring _shame_ on me, are you?"

You're eight years old, and your stepmum's found blood on your clothes, and you ask her, please, don't tell Dad, but she has to because she's got to go to work and it's your dad who'll have to take you to the doctor. So he comes up to get you but you won't go with him, and your nana sees, and she tells your dad she'll take you. You've never seen her fierce before but she is now, "_I'll take him_," and your dad caves in.

You undress for the doctor without a fuss, and your nana strokes your hair as you lie face down on his couch. "Brave boy," she says, because you don't cry. Then you get dressed and they're talking, your nana and the doctor, dead quiet so you can only catch the odd word: _torn; infected; bleeding._ And then when you go over and your nana takes your hand, the doctor asks you again, "And you really don't know what happened to you, Brendan?" And you remember your dad whispering to you before you came away with your nana, "You're not gonna bring _shame_ on me, are you?"

"No, Dad. Course not, Dad."

:::::::

You're pathetic. You're in the Dog with Seamus, and every word that comes out of his mouth cuts a bit of you away, and yet you take it, and you drink the beer he's bought you.

Seamus has gone off to the toilet when Steven comes into the pub looking for you. You feel a wave of relief when you see him, this man who thinks you're worth something, and you hear yourself breathe again. He assumes that you'll have told your father that you're gay, like you said you would; your shame comes back, and so does Seamus.

They introduce themselves to each other, shake hands, and you ought to punch Seamus to the other side of the bar and tell him to get his filthy fucking hands off Steven. But you don't. You stay sat down, and you say something stupid that shows that you're right back in the closet. You shame yourself.

Seamus calls him _Steven._ And he knows that he's gay – he says something to him about Frankie, "Didn't think she'd be your type."

"I'm gonna get going, me, now," Steven says, and he gets up, and you can see that he thinks you've betrayed him. But can't he see that you need him here? You've got no strength of your own, only what he gives you.

"What about your pint?" Seamus says to him.

"I've had enough," Steven says, and he goes, he leaves.

He's gone. He's left.

Is that it, then? You've driven him away by showing what you are, a coward and a fake.

Your dad's talking, but you're only half listening. All you can think about is Steven. He said he'd stand by you, whatever you decided to do, but where is he now? _I've had enough,_ that's what he said. What if he found out everything – what if he found out what Seamus really did to you? You'd have no chance of keeping him then, not if he knew how weak you were, how degraded.

You're angry now.

"Gotta go," you say, and you get up.

"Your sister's cooking dinner. Don't let me down."

You walk out of the pub.

:::::::

"You left me."

You had to see him, even if he doesn't want you. He's all you have, and you need to find out if you still have him.

You walk past him into his flat, and you lean against the stove because you need to be anchored as the rage rises in you. It's not Steven you're raging at, it's yourself, but that's always been the case and you've put him in danger by coming to him, just like you used to, and you haven't changed, have you? You were kidding yourself that you could. So you let go, you let it go, you turn towards him and you lash out, but it's the wall you're punching. He tries to stop you, and you shove him against the wall, and this is the part where you batter him. But you don't.

Only, you know how close you came, and it destroys you.

"I can't change, Steven." You feel yourself losing the one good thing you have, your one hope.

"You already have changed." He tells you that not long ago, this wall – which is scarred now with the blood from where your knuckles split as you hit it – would have been him.

"This is who I am," you say, and you don't think you've ever felt despair like this.

"We're fighting it, Brendan." He's not backing down or backing off. He's moving towards you, not away. "You are beating it." He makes you look at him. He holds your head and forces you to, and when you look you see tears in his eyes, and a look on his face that says that this matters. "I am not gonna give up on you, okay?" You feel his arms around you, his hand in your hair. Nobody's ever held you like he holds you. Nobody's ever tried. "I won't give up on you."

You bury your face in his shoulder, and you sob.


	3. Chapter 3

It's his marital bed. The thought strikes you sometimes, and when it does, it seems to you that the life in which he married Douglas, and you ran away from him for ever, belongs to a different world. And if the thought of it ever troubles Steven, he shows no signs of it, even though it's less than a week since he left his husband to take a chance on you.

This is the bed where you first had him, watching his curiosity defeat the fear he felt; feeling his trembling stop and everything fall into place for him in your hands. This is the only bed you've slept in since you broke down in his arms, after you thought your dad had sent him running from you because he showed Steven what a coward you were. When your fear of losing him, and your disgust with yourself for denying him, and the memories your dad evoked in you, made you lose control so you smashed your fist into the wall. And instead of agreeing with you that you'd never be able to change, Steven gave you a lifeline.

:::::::

"I won't give up on you," that's what he says to you, and somehow he holds the broken parts of you together.

Once, two years and more ago, he came to you in fury and you held him as he cried it out. He reckoned that time that you'd burned down the building that his kids and their mother were in – he didn't know you then, he didn't get that there were lines you wouldn't cross even if it suited you sometimes for people to believe that you would – and it took a bit of persuading to get him to see that he was wrong about you. For a while at least he believed you, maybe because his heart would break if he didn't; he was on the brink of a loss he couldn't bear, and distraught as he was, he believed you, and he begged you to take him to bed. And you did, and he clung to you as if there was only you to keep him from falling. And maybe it helped him, but you felt bad after, like you'd taken advantage. Only you know now, you didn't do it because you couldn't turn down a chance to get laid. You did it because you loved him. Must have done, or you wouldn't have struck a man dead a few weeks later to save Steven from harm.

That time comes into your head as you cling to him now, and you wonder if he remembers it too – his anger and his tears and the desperate sex you had that day – as he holds you and calms your rage and soothes your despair. Maybe he does, because when you're no longer gasping for breath and you kiss his neck, it's like he's expecting it, and he turns his head and kisses your cheek; and when your mouths come together you can taste your tears on his lips.

As he kisses you, he still strokes your hair like he did to calm you down. And still, your breath catches in your chest and he holds you tighter. And then he stops kissing you.

"Shit," he says, and you focus on his face. "The kids. I've got to pick them up from the nursery."

"Okay. That's... I'll - "

"Fuck it, I've got a minute," and his hands are at your belt, hasty, deft, and he's on his knees and his mouth is around you, and all you can do is lean back against the stove and make the decision, do you shut your eyes and watch the firestorm inside your head, or do you open your eyes and watch him? You choose to look, down at his busy hands and his shining hair, and his neck arching as he braces for you to come.

He fills a glass of water from the tap as you zip yourself up.

"I won't be long." He takes a sip of water, swirls it around his mouth and spits it into the sink. "You'll still be here when we get back, won't you?" He gulps down the rest of the glassful, his eyes not leaving you, then he wipes his mouth with the back of his hand.

"Chez is making dinner for me and my dad, so."

"What time for?" He refills the glass and hands it to you.

"Dunno. He's probably still in the pub."

"So you've got a bit of time then. You don't have to go, Brendan, if you don't want to see him. Put the telly on, or go and have a lie down if you want. Okay?"

You realise then how tired you are. Drained. You hardly slept last night, under the same roof as your dad for the first time in a decade and a half, so you agree, "Okay," and you touch Steven's face, and he kisses you like he loves you.

"Back in a bit." He's putting his coat on, the one he wore in Dublin, and then he goes out.

You go to his bedroom, take off your suit jacket and your shoes, and lie down on top of the covers. You'll rest here til he gets back, then maybe go home. Seamus won't be too bad if Cheryl's there, will he?

When you wake up it's night time. There's a blanket over you, and Steven is asleep by your side, his head on your shoulder, his arm across your stomach.

Next time you wake up, he's not there. It's morning and there are voices, his and the kids' and then another man's. Goodbyes are said. Then Steven comes into the bedroom. He's dressed for work.

"Kids are off with their grandad for the day." He sits on the edge of the bed and examines your hand. It's sore and swollen, the skin on your knuckles taut and red. You think he's going to say something, ask you what the fuck was wrong with you yesterday when you were playing it straight in the pub and when you came to him wanting a fight and ended up crying like a child. And if he asks you, you know you'll shut down, because he can't know why your dad makes you into that kind of man. But all Steven says is, "Borrow me toothbrush if you want."

You almost laugh with the relief.

"You saying I got morning breath now, are you?"

"Yeah, I am as it goes. Still love you though."

By the time you've had a bath, he's ironed your shirt and trousers for you. He tells you to stay as long as you want, but he has to get to work because it's the last Saturday before Christmas and he can't afford not to.

Alone in his flat, it feels like a place of safety and you don't want to leave. But you have to: life goes on, and you'd better show your face at the club, so after a while you go. You glance in through the window of the deli on your way, and for some reason Steven looks up from what he's doing just at that moment, and smiles when he sees you.

Cheryl has rubbed her name off the rota til after New Year, and you know why: every minute spent with her dad while he visits is precious to her. Her love for him makes you feel trapped. The real Seamus – the one whose secrets have borne down on you since you were a child – has forced you to be complicit in his corruption, because exposing him would take from your sister the version of him that she adores. But at least with Cheryl not in work, there's no reason for Seamus to come to the club. That thought and a whiskey console you.

You've been there a couple of hours when Steven shows up. There are punters in by then and you're serving behind the bar. He's had to run over to Price Slice, he tells you, to get something for the deli, and he thought he'd come by, see how you're doing.

"Because?" you ask him.

"No reason. Just - "

You reach across the bar and pull his head towards you, and kiss him, and if Seamus wasn't back in your life you would feel what you felt in Dublin; you would feel what a life lived out of the darkness is like.

The darkness follows you. It's evening and you're still working, and you see Cheryl coming up the stairs inside the club, and your dad's with her. Before either of them spots you, you grab your keys and your phone and you slip out of the door onto the balcony, and push past the Saturday night crowd queuing on the external stairway.

You head back to your place. When you switch on the light, first thing you see is a jacket of your dad's, hanging over the back of a chair. You walk past it to your bedroom, and for a moment you stand still. And then you get changed, and get your holdall out of the wardrobe, throw some clothes into it, and you fetch your stuff from the bathroom, and you put on your leather jacket, and then you lock up and leave.

You turn up on Steven's doorstep, and he lets you in without a question and carries on putting his kids to bed, and then somehow he more than doubles what he's been planning to have for his tea so there is enough to feed you too, and you're ravenous. And he's got some beers in the fridge and you have a couple, both of you do, and for some reason you haven't touched each other since you got there, until you put down your plates and you're drinking, sat on the sofa side by side, and he breaks the silence with, "I was hoping you were gonna come back, Brendan. I'm glad you did." And you take his beer from his hand and put it down, and you kiss him, and he curls around you, his legs across your lap.

Teenagers. That's what you're like, snogging on the sofa, copping a feel. It occurs to you that you never did this when you _were_ a teenager, not with anyone. You made attempts at it, with Eileen, mimicking what you'd seen your mates do with their girls out of the corner of your eye, but it was rudimentary and baffling, knowing what you were meant to be feeling for, but not what you were meant to be feeling. And anything you did with a lad back then was furtive and shameful, a dangerous game of trying to make them think it was their idea, when really it was you that ached for whatever it was that they could give you if it wasn't a sickness and a sin. There was no _joy_ there, but with Steven there is, as you try to shut up that stupid laugh of his for fear it'll wake the house.

When he comes back from checking the kids are asleep, you waylay him and carry him to bed, lay him there, shove a chair against the door, relieve him of his tracksuit bottoms; push his sweater up so his chest is exposed to you, and kiss it, and tug at his nipples with your teeth, one then the other, and soothe them with a lick when he grumbles. And at some point you both remember that you don't have to rush, because you're together now and the sense that has dogged you each time you've had each other in the past – the sense that each time might be the last – can be shaken off. So he gets up and puts on his dressing gown and moves the chair away from the door, and goes and has a bath. And when he comes back he shakes you awake, and his skin is slicked with oil, and he smells of sandalwood, and the hair at the nape of his neck is damp, and the heat of the water is on him. You stroke every inch of him; he squirms sometimes when your touch is barely there, and when it's heavy he closes his eyes and arches towards your hand. And then when you roll onto your back, he crawls over you to lie on your body, and holds your face in both his hands and kisses you, long and slow, as you trail your fingers up and down his spine.

Next day he takes his children out to let off some steam, and he's got shopping to do. You go to the club. It's Sunday so it's short hours, which you're glad about. Cheryl's given up trying to call you, but you're getting texts from her now. Guilt-tripping ones: _Dad's upset not seeing u_, and _I'm doing a roast not that you're interested_, and then a friendlier tack, _I'm glad you're all loved up with Ste but it would mean the world to Dad if u came round._ Your phone vibrates again and you almost don't look at it, because you've had enough and she's getting to you and you're going to have to cave in and go home for your sister's sake, and then you'll be sitting across the table making smalltalk with that man, hearing the coded meaning in every word he says to you. Eventually you check the message though: _From Steven_, it says. _Got jaimsons. See u in a bit? x._

When you get to Steven's place it's not late, so the kids are still up.

"Daddy's got something for you," Leah tells you.

"Has he now?" You look at Steven, and his eyes smile.

"Up there." She points to a bottle of Jameson's on the kitchen counter. "Daddy says it comes from where he went on holiday."

"Want one?" Steven asks you.

"That'll do for starters."

:::::::

It's Monday morning now: Christmas Eve. This is the bed you've been sleeping in, Steven's marital bed, the bed you first had him in. This is the bed you've been fucking in, with a chair wedged under the door handle in case the kids wake up in the night or too early in the morning and try to come in. They don't know you've been staying here, Leah and Lucas, because Steven's trying to spare them too many more explanations right now: you're both making out that you're visiting, that's the story, and they just haven't happened to see you leave at bedtime or arrive in the mornings. Probably Leah knows by now though, she's a pretty smart kid; she's playing along while she evaluates the situation.

You get up and get dressed.

There's Christmas stuff everywhere. Steven's not got much money to spend – you're not sure that he's been paying himself at all while the deli's income has been so erratic – but never mind that most of the decorations are old or from the pound shop, it feels like there's so much love in this little family of his, and it's what you've always imagined somehow, in an ideal world. You've given it your best shot over the years: when your kids were small, and since you've moved over here with Cheryl, you've done the whole Christmas thing, attempted to make new memories to blot out the old ones, the ones from when you were a boy. But there's always been something that's ruined it. Rows with Eileen; people that needed dealing with. And now you look at this boy, this young dad, sat on the floor wrapping up presents and whatever, and you think, this was your chance to have a Christmas where you put the past behind you, but you can't because it's haunted by your father's presence in the village.

Steven wants you both to take his daughter out while Lucas is at some party; there's something special going on in the Dog, apparently, where you could take her. But you can't, can you? Because your dad's got you hiding away from him, like you've been doing all your life. Steven reckons you're not making the effort, and you snap at him, you tell him you can't risk Seamus seeing you with him, and he goes off. Shit. You don't blame him, when he's heard a line like that coming out of your mouth after everything.

You go to the club. Anne's there, in full Mitzeee mode. She's in the middle of tarting the place up for some event she's agreed to hold without running it past you. Obviously she wants to get rid of you: she tells you that Cheryl wants you to meet her at the Dog for lunch. It'll mean a lot to Cheryl, Anne reckons, to have some brother-sister time, and you guess she's right. It's not Cheryl's fault you've been scared to go home, and why should you let your father drive a wedge between you and your sister?

When you walk into the pub, your sister isn't there but your dad is. She's set you up. It's a surprise to him too, only he's amused by it whereas you want to turn around and get out. He offers you a pint and tells you to sit down and wait for Cheryl. You do as you're told.

Next thing, Steven comes in the door with Leah, and you don't want him here but all the same your heart lifts at the sight of him.

Seamus sees him the same time as you do, calls him _Steven_, gets down on the floor to speak to Leah. Then he asks them to join the party. Steven tries to say no, but Seamus is a hard man to say no to, and he goes to get the drinks in while Steven comes over to where you're sitting. He says to you they'll go if you want them to, and you ought to tell him yes, please leave, but if he does then you'll have no one in your corner. So you gesture at him to sit down with you.

There's piles of food but you have no appetite. There are Christmas crackers, there's cheesy music playing. Cheryl's happier than you've seen her in months: her dad makes her happy. There's chatter but you barely hear it. Steven is throwing himself into the spirit of it, trying hard. He's trying with Seamus, smiling at him, getting on with him as if he believes that the Seamus he sees is the real one. Does he think he's helping, by being like that? Probably he does, probably he thinks he's smoothing things over like Cheryl wants to do, but you're feeling more and more isolated.

Someone phones you. You check who it is, and it's Anne, must be about work, and you want to pick up but your dad tells you not to, and Cheryl's giving you her you're-a-disappointment look; and you do as you're told. And Leah's kicking the leg of her chair, and your dad is talking, and you tune into his voice, and what's he saying? "I thank God for the chance to be with my family again. It means so much to me." And you need him to stop, and Leah's still kicking, and you shout at her, "Stop it!"

"Brendan!" Steven says, and he takes his daughter onto his lap and she cuddles into him because her father is her safe place.

You get up and go, back to the club. You pull at the neck of your sweater as you walk. It's choking you.

The place is in darkness. So that's why Anne tried calling you, the electrics have blown. That lad Liam is having a go at fixing it. Anne tells you she's sorry for pulling you away from your family thing. Yeah, you're not sorry though, and you tell her that.

You sit down with her on the sofa. It's dark but for the light from your torches, and she's asking you what the deal is with you and your dad: she reckons he seems alright, and she asks what Steven makes of him, and so you think of how Steven was with him today, all chit-chat and Christmas spirit even though he knows – what is it that he knows? He knows the effect Seamus has on you, even if he doesn't know why.

"Steven's been taken in by him, just like everyone else," you tell her. "They'll be best friends next week." She tells you Steven's smarter than that, and she's right about him except, Seamus has a way of taking people in, getting them on his side so that if you try and tell them what he's really like, they won't believe you.

There's something about sitting here with this girl, the only friend you haven't pushed away, even though you've tried to in the past – she's a foot shorter than you with her high heels on, but fuck, she's tenacious. There's something about the darkness and the torchlight and the quiet that lends itself to confidences, and you find yourself telling her that Seamus was always worse at Christmas, and she picks up on your tone and asks you, "Was he violent?" And you look at her, and you tell her the truth, "Sometimes," but not the whole truth, that sometimes he didn't need to be violent because your fear was enough.

Anne asks you if Cheryl knows, and Steven. And then the lights come on, and the intimacy goes, but still she says to you, "Talk to them." You can't. You can't do that, but her faith in Steven reminds you that he's on your side. _I won't give up on you._

There's something you can do, and that's to say sorry to Leah for shouting at her, and hope Steven will understand. So you kidnap this cuddly toy, a polar bear that's part of Anne's theme for the night she's hosting. Might work.

You've got a few things to do first, but you make sure you get to Steven's flat before the kids' bedtime. He's on the phone to Amy when you get there, and you hear him telling her that Douglas can't come to the phone because he's in the bath. Not spread the good news yet, then. Steven says to you he'll tell her after Christmas, and that's fine by you; the lovely Amy is the least of your worries right now.

The polar bear does the trick with Leah. Maybe girls are more forgiving than boys. You hope so, because you want to get things right with these kids; but you doubt that you've got what it takes because your track record isn't so good.

When Steven's put Leah and Lucas to bed and he's with you on the sofa at last, you think he's oblivious to your mood but he's not, he picks up on it and he reassures you that they'll get used to you. "It's only been a couple of days, hasn't it," he says, and he's right, and he's right here beside you.

"Good days," you correct him. "Been a couple of _good days_," and he says it with you, and he's smiling, and you kiss. And then he has to get up and leave you because Leah's calling him, but that's okay. That's okay. You love him, you love all of who he is, and that includes Steven the dad who loves his kids.

You didn't expect Leah to want you to read her a story, but she does. Steven gives you a get-out, he says he'll understand if you have to go; but you stay, and you read to her until she falls asleep. This – all of this – is a glimpse of something you thought you'd missed your chance of. It feels fragile, as if you might fuck it up or as if it'll be snatched from you somehow, but its fragility makes it feel sweeter, more precious.

Steven hands you a beer when you leave his sleeping daughter. He says she hasn't slept through the night since that accident that put him in a coma, and you tell him you thought you were going to lose him, and you tell him that you're sorry about your dad and how he gets under your skin and you can't get him out. And the darkness is creeping towards you again with these thoughts, but Steven won't let it take you: "He'll be gone next week, won't he," he says, "Then it'll be you and me again."

"I'm counting the days." You start to walk off to get the bottle opener, but he stops you, "Oh, and Brendan? Merry Christmas..." and he's produced a sprig of mistletoe, for fucksake.

"Seriously? Okay."

His mouth tastes of the mince pie that he's eaten on behalf of Santa. The skin behind his ear is soft on your lips. His neck is warm and its sinews taut as he turns his head to whisper, "Love you."

You let go of him. You feel choked up: must be getting sentimental in your old age. You don't want him to see it, so you go and open the beers.

Cheryl's been texting, asking where you are. You should get off home after you finish your drink.

"I better get going after this, Steven. It's Chez, you know? She's got this idea in her head, this family Christmas thing with me and her and Dad, and I've... I been letting her down."

"It's not your fault, Bren. It's not like you asked him to come and visit."

"Ain't her fault either. She's my baby sister, I should be there Christmas morning."

"That's tomorrow though."

"Mm?" You look at him.

"Tomorrow, not tonight." He gazes back at you from under those showgirl eyelashes of his.

"Good point," you say, and he gets up from his seat on the sofa beside you, and kneels astride your lap, his hands on your shoulders. His kiss contradicts his brazen move: it's shy almost, and only intensifies when you take his face in your two hands and kiss him back, and that's when his mouth opens and your tongues fuck.

He sits back onto your knees.

"You gonna stay for a bit, then?" His voice is low.

"Sounds promising," you say.

He's got to put the presents in the kids' stockings over the fireplace ready for the morning. You tell him you'll do it while he sorts himself out, so he fetches the bag of toys for you and then disappears into the bathroom. You divide them up, guessing which are whose, and feeling – what? Lucky. _Normal_. You turn out the lights, go to Steven's bedroom, strip off and get into bed, then he comes into the room and puts the chair against the door. You prop yourself up on your elbows, and watch him drop his clothes and stretch up to get your condoms and lube from where he keeps them in the top of the wardrobe. Then he comes to you: you pull the covers back and he straddles you, leans down to kiss you then sits up again.

He's not used to your body yet, the new version of it that you started building in prison. You're heavier now than you've ever been, stronger, and Steven's hands glide over the muscles of your arms, your chest, your stomach, like he's getting the lie of the land. Then he starts grinding.

You grasp his thighs, feeling their covering of hair against your palms. He holds onto your biceps, and his grip is strong. You feel your erection growing against him as he moves over you. It would be so easy to go bareback now, and you don't think he'd stop you, but you know you'd better not for his sake, not til you get yourself checked, so you tell him to wait a sec and you scrabble for a condom. He doesn't make it easy: you're still on your back and he's on all fours above you and he's kissing your jaw and your throat, so you can't see what you're doing with the rubber but you get it on eventually. He deals with the lube himself then, both hands behind him, breathing hard through parted lips; his eyes and your eyes are locked together. You play with his cock as he positions himself and slowly, slowly takes you inside him.

You're being lazy, letting him do all the work, but fuck, he's good at it, tensing his muscles and making tiny rotations of his pelvis to keep you going. Then you take him by surprise, thrusting up hard into him, and he cries out and his stomach jerks inwards with the shock, and you laugh, and when he laughs too the sensation is delicious.

You don't want to come while he's riding you. You manage to wrestle him onto his back without unjoining from him, and he wraps his legs tight around you, and his spine curves off the bed as he comes, and you come. You ease out of him gently, and when you roll off him you hold him in your arms, and for an hour or two, until it's time for you to leave his bed and go back to your own for Christmas morning, you sleep.


	4. Chapter 4

It's been a long day but you're lying awake. You look at the clock and it's not yet midnight – an early night for you, but you came to bed as soon as you could because you want this Christmas Day to be over.

Last night you went to bed with Steven, and you fucked and you slept, and it was one o'clock in the morning when you started to get up to leave him because you'd promised Cheryl you would spend the day with her. Steven stopped you though, "Don't go yet" – almost said it in his sleep, waking up only enough to nestle against you when you stayed, and even as he kissed you, his head lolled back into sleep. You made sure you didn't disturb him when you got up finally an hour or two later, and it was three o'clock when you got home and into your own bed.

You've discovered in these times you've slept with Steven since you found each other again in Dublin, that he hogs the middle of the bed if you let him; you didn't know this before, because most of your sex life in your past with him was conducted in places without beds. Back in your own bed this morning, you slept til late and woke up in the middle because he wasn't there. You lay still and listened to the sounds from the kitchen of Cheryl getting busy, and of her voice and of Seamus's. When you got up you tied your dressing gown tight around you.

"Bren! I didn't even know you were home!" Cheryl greeted you, delighted.

"Said I would be, didn't I?" You hugged her and kissed her on the cheek. "Merry Christmas, sis."

"He's back is he?" Seamus said to you and about you. "A Christmas miracle."

"Looks like it," you said, and you went up to the bathroom, locked the door and showered.

Then it was a matter of getting through the day.

You stayed home and helped Cheryl with the dinner, even though she and your dad both wanted you to leave her to it and go out with him for a pint. That was the best part of the day, when Seamus was out for a couple of hours and you were able to breathe, and you and your sister had a laugh together. The worst part of the day was sitting across the table from your dad, his eyes on you as you failed to eat more than half of what was on your plate. "Cheryl's gone to all this bother, Brendan. You could do her the honour of eating it." You couldn't, though. It stuck in your throat.

You spoke to your kids: Padraig was hyper, Declan was civil. You got a text from Steven, _Hows things? Thinking abt u xxx_, and you sent back, _Glad when it's over. Happy xmas x_.

You had to help Seamus up the stairs, you and your sister between you, because he had a lot of drink in him by the end of the day. He didn't want to be helped, but Cheryl was worried he might fall and hurt himself. Then you had a drink with Cheryl, a nightcap, and she told you it was the best Christmas she'd had in years, and you thought for the hundredth time that there must be something wrong with you: because what she sees is something normal, and what you see is horror.

You were relieved to get to bed but sleep won't come. It's not midnight yet; still Christmas Day.

You pick up your phone and call Steven. It rings a few times, then, "Hello?" His voice is groggy.

"Did I wake you?"

"Bren. Yeah. Don't matter though. Everything okay?"

"It's... Just wanted to say merry Christmas, Steven."

"Is it still Christmas? Oh yeah, it is. The kids got me up at five, didn't they, so it feels like it's well late. Merry Christmas to you too, anyway."

"Kids okay?"

"Boss, yeah, they had a great day."

"Good."

You both fall into silence, and you listen to him breathing. Then he asks, "You still up?"

"No. Had an early one."

"You could've come round. You still could."

"I can't, Steven. Wish I could but it's not fair on Cheryl, you know? She already thinks I'm treating the place like a hotel. I gotta be here in the morning at least."

"Wish you were here though."

"Oh yeah?"

"Yeah. Got used to it, innt I. Got used to, you know..."

"No, what?"

"You know." You don't respond, but wait for him to fill the silence, and eventually he does. "_Doing_ it."

You can picture him, his face flushed with embarrassment, and the thought warms you.

"What you got on, Steven?"

"What?"

"You wearing something?"

"What, now you mean?"

"Yes, now."

"Erm, a vest and me pyjama bottoms."

"That all?"

"Well, socks."

"Course... Pull your vest up."

"Brendan..."

"You done it?" You listen to him shifting.

"Yeah," he says.

"I want you to stroke your stomach." You pause. "You doing that for me?"

"Yeah." He giggles softly.

"How's it feel?"

"Erm, nice."

You need to work on his vocabulary sometime.

"Take off your pants."

"Hang on." You hear him drop his phone; there's a bit of shuffling then he picks up again. "Done it."

"Good lad. Cos I wanna touch you, see. I want you to touch yourself for me." You slide your hand down inside your boxers and take hold of yourself: you're already getting hard. "You doing it?" you ask him.

"Yes." He hisses on the _s_ as a breath jerks out of him and in again. "You?"

"Yeah."

For a minute or two you say nothing, and neither does he, but you let him hear your breathing as it quickens and strains, and he lets you hear his. And then his voice, a jagged whisper, "Fuck me."

You grip your cock tight around the root to keep yourself from coming so soon. And you say to him, "I'm gonna finger-fuck you. You want that?"

"Yeah."

"Tell me then."

"I want you to... finger-fuck me," and again he laughs, breathy and low.

"Suck your fingers then." You listen. "They wet now?"

"Mm."

"You on your back, Steven?"

"On me side now."

"Okay, do it." You can hear that his mouth is gaping now; he's panting. "What's it feel like? Tell me."

"It feels... like... like..." and then not a word but a whimper.

Jesus. You move your fist on your cock.

"Like what, Steven? What's it feel like?"

"Feels... feels tight."

Jesus. Fuck.

After a minute you realise he's not gasping any more, he's breathing slower and quieter.

"You stopped?" you ask him.

"Yeah."

"Why?"

"Cos I can't do it like you do it. I don't like it 'cept when you do it."

"Okay." Okay then. "So tell me what you want. Steven, tell me."

"I want you to fuck me."

"Yeah?"

"But I... I want you to bite me first."

Your balls are aching; your hand is working.

"Bite you where?"

"Anywhere."

"_Where?_"

"My legs."

"Your thighs, yeah?"

"Yeah."

"The insides of your thighs."

"Yeah."

You can hear something now, his cover rustling at a rhythmic movement.

"You jerking off?"

His "Yeah" is a whisper between gasps.

"I'll bite you then I'll fuck you."

"I'll scratch you."

"My back, yeah?"

"Yeah... Yeah."

"I'll fuck you harder."

"I'll scratch you harder... like... I'll..."

"Fuck..." You're going to blow but you can hear that he's nearly there too and you hold yourself back.

"Brendan... fuck... fuck!" And his voice is muffled like he's stifling it in his pillow, and you let yourself come as soon as he does, and your breath is loud but you can still hear his, and you hear his slowing down as you feel yours do the same, and you lie there, eyes shut, the covers pushed off you to cool you down.

"You okay?" you ask. A few minutes have passed as you lie there, separately, together.

"Yeah." You can tell that he's smiling. "We gonna see you tomorrow, Bren?"

"Too right, you will. I'll call you, okay?"

"Okay."

"Get back to sleep now, Steven, alright? Kids'll be up before you know it."

"See you tomorrow then. Thanks for... ringing."

"My pleasure..." You hear him laugh, warm and filthy. "Night then."

"Night, Brendan." He pauses – or you think it's a pause, but maybe he's gone? – then he says, "Love you."

"Love you too."

:::::::

Your club isn't open on Boxing Day, and neither is his deli. This is time that you could be spending with him, but it doesn't work out like that: Cheryl wants you around and then there's your dad, who's asking questions about where you keep disappearing to. You never answer him, but you know your sister hates that she has to lie for you because you can't be straight with him – so to speak – and sooner or later she'll cave in and tell him for you. You can _feel_ it. So when she asks you at least to stay til after lunch, you capitulate, but you tell her, if Seamus starts on you, you'll be off.

You go for a run. Your dad is out when you get back, gone to the bookie's to put his bets on for this afternoon. You think Cheryl must have asked him to go easy on you, because when he returns he barely says a word to you. That suits you fine.

He's told Cheryl not to be spending hours cooking like she did yesterday, so instead she's spent hours making this, what would you call it? Buffet, whatever. Cold cuts, breads, pickles. Stuff your dad doesn't need to sit at the table for, and that's what he says, "You don't mind if I eat mine on the settee, do you, beautiful? Only the racing's started by now." And she smiles and says it's fine, even though she's laid the table with a cloth and napkins and glasses for the wine that's in the fridge, and you can see that he's hurt her, and you hate him for that as well as the other things that you hate him for.

You sit at the table with your sister. She tells you she's heard from Joel, his trip home to his mum is going alright, he's building bridges with her now that his stepdad is out of the picture. You nod. You did the kid a favour, maybe he'll realise that now. You make a mental note to send him a text, to remind him again about what careless talk can do.

Cheryl chatters away like she does, but you tune out, and you tune into the commentary on the television, and your dad urging his horses on and cursing when they let him down, and screwing up his betting slips one by one. It's warm in here but you shiver. You remember what your dad was like on a losing streak. You struggle to eat more than a few mouthfuls of what's in front of you, and when your dad comes over to the table to help himself to seconds he looks at your plate and says, "Want me to cut it up for you, son?" Cheryl gives him a look that's meant to chastise him, and he says, "Brendan knows I'm only having a joke with him, don't you Brendan?" and he squeezes your shoulder as he stands behind you.

You feel bad leaving your sister but you've got to get out.

:::::::

It's dark, but the lights are on in Steven's flat and you can see him in his kitchen through the scrappy net curtain. You knock on the door then stand back so he can see you from the window.

Leah lets you in.

Steven's at the cooker. He beams at you. You want to kiss him, but the kids are right here so you don't.

"I'm cooking," he says unnecessarily. "Can't leave it at the minute, crucial stage."

"I should'a called first, Steven, you're busy – "

"I hope you're hungry, I've done loads. Turkey risotto. Oh, you're not sick of turkey are you?"

You love him.

"No, I'm not sick of turkey, and yeah, I'm starving."

"Good." He smiles again. His eyes shine. There's a gleam of sweat on his forehead from the heat of the pan, and he mustn't have shaved this morning because his top lip is shaded with a whisper of stubble.

You're a little bit awkward around the kids: you don't know what they think of you, or how they figure that you fit into their dad's life. But they show you their Christmas presents while Steven dishes up the tea, and tell you that they – and you, apparently – are going to watch _Brave_ while you're eating.

Steven sits them down on cushions in front of the telly with their tea, and you and he sit on the sofa behind them with your plates and with your beers, and with your knees touching.

The risotto doesn't touch the sides.

"Alright, was it?" Steven asks you, looking at your empty plate.

"Best thing I've ever eaten," you tell him. "Well, second best."

"There's more if you want it." He takes your plate from you and goes to the kitchen. You get up and follow him, and pull him out of the kids' line of sight, and kiss him, pressing him against the wall. His mouth is open and eager; he gets a mouthful of moustache, and you suck on his bottom lip and push your pelvis against his. You both know you've got to stop, and you do, just before Lucas comes looking for his dad. You go to the fridge and get out a couple more beers; Steven spoons the rest of the risotto onto your plate, and you both go and sit back down, and wait for the film to finish.

:::::::

The deli's opening the next morning, so Steven has to go to work. Chez Chez will be open too, but not til later so you've got the morning to yourself, and there's something you want to do. You stay in bed until Steven leaves with the kids, and then you get up and walk to the club; the place is deserted, and you go up to the office, open up the laptop and go online.

Once you've found out what you need to know, you delete the search history and leave. You're not going to the nearest hospital – that place always seems to be full of people you know from the village – so instead you drive the other way, and find the place you're looking for. _NHS Walk-In Centre_, the sign at the entrance says, and then when you go in through the sliding doors there's another sign, _Sexual Health Walk-In Clinic._ You almost lose your nerve but you think, man up, and you do what it says on the sign, you walk in. You go to the desk and have a muttered conversation with the woman there. She asks for your name and you hesitate, and she explains, like she's explained it a thousand times, that they won't contact your doctor without your permission. Okay. Think of a name.

"Warren Fox," you tell her.

You glance at the other people waiting. A girl, maybe sixteen, maybe not, whose mate is holding her hand. A woman in her thirties reading a magazine, but you can tell she's not taking in a word of it. A lad with a piercing in his lip and several in his ear, sitting there yawning, blasé.

When it's your turn, the nurse who sees you is older, like someone's mum. It's all first names here. "Have a seat, Warren. I'm Ndidi." You just want a screening, you tell her like you told the woman on the desk, but it doesn't work like that, there's a whole load of questions to be answered before they do whatever it is they do. You fight the desire to leave, and you answer the questions, and you listen to yourself telling the truth. No, you've got no reason to think you have an infection, no symptoms. You just want to be sure, you tell her, because you've... you're with someone now, and you want to stop using, you know, condoms. You tell Ndidi, when she asks, the number of people you've had sex with in the last six months. _Men_, you tell her when she asks: it's men that you fuck.

She asks if you always use condoms, and you say that you do, except... there was one time when you didn't because you weren't thinking straight and it just kind of happened. "And when was that? If it was within the last three months, there are one or two tests that we'll have to ask you to come back at a later date to repeat, just to make sure any problems show up." And you think back, and it was September, around the twentieth wasn't it, when you fucked Simon Walker? "It's over three months," you say. Then, because one of the things they're screening for is HIV, she has to tell you stuff, _counsel_ you, talk you through the _outcomes_ and _actions_.

She gets down to business in the end, what you've come here for: takes a couple of little vials of blood, which is nothing. Takes a _swab_. She is the second woman who's ever touched your cock.

It's over quickly, the testing part. You'll get a letter in about ten days, in an unmarked envelope, or they can text you when the results are back. That's what you opt for, the text message – a letter turning up addressed to Warren Fox would be hard to explain, and knowing your luck, Joel would get to it before you did.

You almost sprint back to your car.

:::::::

You're working every night. Punters are in the party mood between Christmas and New Year, and with Joel away and Cheryl taking the time off to do whatever it is she does with your dad, someone's got to keep an eye on things, and it falls to you. Anne's throwing herself into it too; she's good as gold, that girl, but she can't be at the club every night.

Steven's working too, all day every day. One morning you call in at the deli to see him, and Cheryl comes in with your dad. "So this is where you're hiding, son," Seamus says, "You like the food here, do you?" Then Cheryl chips in, "The food here's great, Dad, Ste's a talented chef," and she gives Steven a smile. "Too fancy for me," Seamus says, and looks from Steven to you and says, "But each to their own." You feel yourself begin to sweat. Steven hands you a coffee. "Two forty please," he says, and you think he's pissed off with you for being a coward, but when you meet his eyes you can see that he's not: what he's doing is, he's rescuing you. You pay him, and when he gives you your change you say "Thanks," and you hope he can read the _Thank you_ in your eyes, and you go.

You go to him at night, each night, after work. He waits up for you because he knows you're coming, although you think he dozes on the sofa while he's waiting. One night you're later than normal because of an event at the club. You call him as usual when you're outside the flats, because if you knock you might wake the kids, and when he comes to the door you can tell he was in bed, he's bleary-eyed and tousled, and the features of his face look softly undefined, and when you put your arms around him he has the humid warmth of sleep on him, and he shivers as the cold leather of your coat embraces him. He circles his arms around your neck, and you exchange a few murmured words about the day you've each had, and you feel his voice vibrate on the skin above your collar. When you go to bed with him then, all you do together is sleep.

In the mornings you get up and go home before Leah and Lucas are awake. If you make sure you're home when your dad comes downstairs for breakfast, he won't ask questions about where you spent the night. You don't hang around though, you go out for a run or to the gym, and then you go to work even if you don't need to be there til the afternoon. Running, gym, work: it's all running, you know it is, and the only time you stop is when you're with Steven. It's only when you are with the man you want, that you are the man you want to be.

Monday is New Year's Eve. Cheryl's going into town with some mates from her college, and you're going to work. She asks you if you can take the night off and keep your dad company. You tell her you can't, it's one of the busiest nights of the year at Chez Chez and you need to be there. Seamus says to her, "I'll be fine, darling, you deserve a night out away from your old dad." Cheryl _simpers_. Then he turns to you: "Obviously Brendan's indispensable at that little discotheque."

You go out, slam the door. Head for the deli.

"You home tonight, Steven?"

"Yeah. I'd come to the club but there's no babysitters, I've tried."

"How about I finish early, come round to yours?"

"Can you do that?" It's like his eyes are lit up from inside.

"Sure I can. Eight o'clock, yeah?"

"I'll bring us some dinner from here. Anything you fancy?"

"Now there's a leading question."

:::::::

You've squared it with Anne – she's got her sister working with her, and there are some lads on the bar and your security boys are in place just in case – so you get away and get to Steven's place.

Leah opens the door again. You thought they'd be in bed by now, her and Lucas, but that's okay. You like seeing Steven with his kids, he's easy with them and patient, and even if he has to shout at them sometimes, you can see they know they're safe with him.

"Amy said she was gonna phone," Steven explains, "That's why they're still up."

The phone rings at the next minute, and the kids scramble to pick it up. Steven stands over them as they talk to their mother, first Lucas then Leah, and then Steven speaks to her. "No, just staying in... I know, but we've got Champagne" – you've brought a bottle – "So we'll have that in a bit... No, he's not here, he's gone out to get some... something, but I'll tell him you said hello..."

Steven's got his back to you, and you can see from his awkward stance that he's embarrassed that you're hearing this. You're not the only one that's not got the guts to tell the truth.

He goes to put his kids to bed. When he comes back he says, "Sorry about, you know, not telling Amy about us." You shrug. You're not telling Seamus, so you guess you're even. But the thought of Seamus has intruded now, in this place where you never want to think of him, and you feel yourself getting riled. "I'll tell her soon, Brendan," Steven promises, "It's just... well, it's hard, cos they're her kids innt they – "

"What, she thinks her kids ain't _safe_ with me?" You keep your distance from him, because your rising anger is scaring you. "That what you're saying, boy? What's she think I'm gonna do to them, Steven, hm?"

"What you on about?" He's looking at you like he thinks you're a headcase, and he's annoyed. "She thinks _I'm_ not safe with you, don't she. I wonder why that is, eh Brendan? Course she won't want her kids around us if she thinks they're gonna see you batter me."

Fuck. You're a fucking idiot. Fuck, fuck, fuck. You sit down on the sofa and clasp your hands in front of you.

"They're not gonna see it, Steven, I'm... It's not gonna happen."

"I know it's not. Wouldn't be here if I thought it was, would I?" He doesn't come to you. "I'll put the tea on." He goes to the kitchen, and says over his shoulder, "And I'm not a _boy_, alright?"

You follow him and stand awkwardly in the doorway. Christ, you feel stupid. You clear your throat.

"You're _my_ boy. Okay?"

He's sliding a pizza into the oven, and as you speak to him he fumbles somehow, and burns himself.

"Now look what you made me do."

You look at his face, and he's not annoyed any more, even if his words are. You take his hand and see where he's burnt his thumb, and you bring it to your mouth.

"That better?"

"Yeah... Look, Brendan, just cos Amy might still think you're the same person, it's not what _I_ think. I know you're different now – look how you stopped yourself a minute ago, yeah? I trust you, right, but you've got to trust me too and you've got to trust yourself or we're just gonna be worrying all the time. I'm right, aren't I?"

You don't know if he's right, but you know he's got faith in you, you can see it in the way his eyes search your face for the answer he wants.

You kiss him. When you kiss him, all you can think about is him, so there's no space left in your head for your doubts and your fears.

:::::::

Last time you bought him Champagne, he never drank it. You drank it with someone else, in a hotel room you'd booked in the hope that Steven would come back to you. It seems an age ago.

This bottle, the one you've brought him – one of the expensive ones from the club, not the kind that the punters will be knocking back there tonight – stays in the fridge while the pizza cooks and you snog your boy. You open it while he takes the plates and the pizza into his front room, and the cork flies out of the bottle and hits a mug which clatters into the sink. Lucas shouts out, "Daddy? Dad?" and Steven goes to see him. They come out of his bedroom a minute later, Lucas in Steven's arms. "See?" Steven says, "It's just Brendan. Back to sleep now?"

Lucas says, "Okay," and Steven takes him back to bed.

:::::::

You've drunk half the Champagne between you when Steven says he wants to save the rest for midnight; he puts the bottle back in the fridge and comes back with a couple of beers. You think he prefers the beer anyway, to be honest, but you can tell that the Champagne has gone straight to his head, and he's delicious like this: clumsy, giggly, flirty. There's no way you're saving _him_ for midnight.

The pizza's nearly gone. He's taking a bite out of the last slice, and the mozzarella stretches into strings, and when they break they attach themselves to his chin, and he laughs and hooks them into his mouth with his tongue, and that's it, that's done it, you're on him then. His lips are savoury and oily; his body moulds itself to yours, beneath you now on the sofa. He's all arms and legs, ungainly.

"We better go to bed," he says when you pause for breath, "Cos the kids..." so you get up and you haul him up by his wrists, and the momentum propels him into your arms. You hitch him up, his legs around your waist, and carry him off. You put the chair against the door – it's a habit now – and you get the lube and condoms down from the top of the wardrobe, and when you turn back to him he's sprawled on the bed, looking at you, with his hand down the front of his trackies.

"You little whore," you tell him, and he says, "Oi, don't be rude," and he tries to fend you off with a kick as you go to kneel on the bed. You catch hold of his ankle and stand over him. You peel off his sock and run your thumbnail over the sole of his foot, and he writhes and squirms and begs you to stop. "You gonna be good?" you ask. He's laughing and breathless, and gasps out a _Yes_, so you stop tickling him.

You whip his clothes off him, then you stand and take off your own, and again he's watching you, and again his hand is wrapped around his cock. Everything about him is ripe; he's simultaneously taut and yielding. No one, you think, could look at him and not want to touch him. He's _inviting_.

You get into bed – he doesn't kick you this time – and pull him against you, and roll onto your back so he's lying full length on top of you. He raises himself up on his arms, so now you're just in contact with him from your feet to your groin. The bedside lamp is on, and you can see the gentle curve of his biceps, and the veins standing out in the crooks of his elbows. Your cock hurts from the weight of him where his pelvis is pressing down on you, and from wanting him. And then he gets off you and puts on his dressing gown. What the fuck?

"Getting the Champagne," he says. "Nearly twelve now, innit." And off he goes, and comes back with the bottle, drops his dressing gown and gets back into bed beside you. He's picked up your watch from the bedside cabinet, and you both lie back and look at it until its hands tick round to midnight. You sit up and hand him the bottle.

"Happy New Year, Bren," he says, and takes a swig.

"Happy New Year." You drink from the bottle, and then you take another mouthful and you kiss him, and let the Champagne wash from your mouth to his, and you push him back on the bed and catch with your tongue the drips that spill from the corners of his mouth. He laughs, and he holds your head and pulls you down to kiss him some more. You're hard now, and he knows it. You feel his hips lifting off the bed, nudging you to get on with it.

You turn him over so he's face down. He bends one leg to the side to give you a bit of an angle, and you put on a rubber. You take another swig of Champagne, and this time you drizzle it from your mouth down the crack of his arse, and it wets his hole as your tongue goes in.

You fuck him. You've got hold of his hands and they're pressed into the pillow either side of his head, your fingers meshed with his. His shoulder blades look sharp and delicate as you look down at them. You're going into him slowly: Champagne and spit isn't much of a lubricant, you're discovering, and he's very tight. Then you hear him say into the pillow, "Come on," and you feel him strain and open for you, and you push in hard. He starts cursing, "Fuck, fuck!" You love it, and you lean down and tell him again into the sweet spot where his neck meets his shoulder, "You little whore," and you move inside him as he swears and gasps. He twists his head around and bites your wrist, and you feel it in your whole body, and you feel as if you're in your body and out of it, and the roar you hear when you come is like your voice and unlike it. He comes too, moments later, giving you an aftershock that finishes you off.

:::::::

You're sitting up in bed, both of you, passing the Champagne bottle between you: you've worked up a thirst. He's put the light out now and you can barely see him, but you can feel him, tucked as close as he can get – as close as you can get him – under your arm.

He wants to know when you're going to get up and get dressed and leave him.

"Not yet," you tell him. "Why, you still horny? You little – "

"I'm not a whore, Brendan," he says, and digs his elbow into your ribs.

You laugh and ask him, "What are you, then?" and you kiss his hair.

"Dunno. Your boy, I suppose."

You're not going anywhere.


	5. Chapter 5

It gets harder to leave him. Each time you get out of his bed in the early hours of the morning, the desire to stay with him gets stronger. What gets easier is getting up and dressed and out of his flat without waking him: you've got it down to a fine art now, rolling away from him slowly and tucking the warm covers around him in the space where your body has been; then no need to switch a light on, just find your clothes wherever you dropped them when you came to bed, and put them on silently, and get out before he notices you've gone.

You're just as careful when you get home, and you know it's fucking pathetic sneaking in like you're some teenager who's stayed out after curfew, but you don't want your dad to know what time you come in, because you don't want him knowing any fucking thing about your life. He'll be gone soon, anyhow. It's New Year's Day, so he'll be off in a day or two, and you'll be able to restart the life that you had for five minutes before he got here.

You didn't get home til four this morning. Steven's a very persuasive lad, and he rewarded you for staying longer than you'd intended, and you slept with him for a while after. You sleep better with him beside you than you've ever slept, but when you get home to your own bed your sleep is fractured, and you've woken early so that you can have your shower before Seamus is up. You reckon your dad will be lying in until late, because he'll have been seeing in the New Year til whatever time the pub shut. You hear Cheryl in the kitchen cooking breakfast when you're back in your bedroom getting dressed after your shower, and you think she's probably cooking it for her dad, but you can't hear voices so he can't have come downstairs yet. If she's on her own, and if she's cooked enough for you too, you'll stop and have breakfast with her. She'll like that: you know that she misses you while you're keeping out of the house so much – or at least the part of her that isn't entirely wrapped up in her dad, misses you – and you miss her too. It's not your sister's fault that you can't be in the same room as your father.

It's Seamus who's cooking the breakfast. Soon as you see him when you come out of your room, you lose your appetite, and you tell him you're not hungry.

"You don't eat enough," he says. "Scrawny wretch, even now." _Scrawny wretch. _ And you remember the boy you were when he used to come in from the pub and haul you out of bed and want you to spar with him. He's _made_ you remember. He's made you remember being half doped with sleep, and not being quick enough to block his punches never mind land any of your own, and his voice slurring at you, quiet so as not to wake the house, "Am I ever going to make a man of you? Scrawny wretch, you make me ashamed." And you remember feeling relieved, beneath your fear, that it was a night for sparring, and not one of the other kind of nights.

You're heading out but then he hooks you. He tells you that the little lad from the pub – the Osbornes' boy, grandchild is it? Charlie – went missing last night. There was a search for him in the woods, and you ask your dad if he joined in the search, and he says he did. Does he know what you're thinking? This story of a lost child, is it bait to keep you here? Because if it is, it's worked: you're sitting down across the table from him now, when a moment ago you were half way out the door. Charlie's fine, apparently. But now you're here, you pick up your knife and fork and you're going to start eating this breakfast that Seamus has made for you, until he starts asking questions: "Aren't you going to tell me her name? I've hardly seen you this Christmas. She must be pretty special."

So that's it, that's why he reeled you in. He's fishing for answers, he wants to know where you go and who you see, but you're on to him, you're not going to bite. You drop your cutlery and look at him, and he's pissed at you. "Eat the white pudding at least," he tells you as if you're a child. "Call yourself an Irishman?" You impale a slice of it, cut it, fork it into your mouth, meet his eyes as you do it. _Fuck you. _

Cheryl comes in. She's been out for milk. Seamus changes from your dad to her dad; he smiles, benign, and jumps up to get her breakfast. You tell her you've got to go to work. She must know you're getting out to get away from your dad – she must know there is no work that needs doing in a nightclub at breakfast time on New Year's Day – so she gives up asking you to stay, but she says can you meet her in the Dog for lunch because she'd like your help with her assignment. Okay, you agree to that, just so you can get out of this house where the things unsaid make your skin itch.

You find something to do at the club: stocktaking. It's a chore, but it kills the time til you leave to meet Cheryl for lunch.

When you walk into the pub, she's there, and so's Seamus, and so you walk out. You must be stupid: when she told you this assignment needed to be handed in tomorrow, it didn't occur to you that the fucking college is on vacation and she had to be lying to you.

She comes after you. "Other people – normal people – they have lunch with their dads, so why can't you?" She's answered her own question, but you answer it anyway: "Because I'm not normal." But it doesn't matter to your sister that you don't want to make up with your dad, because she thinks you can, she thinks if you all sit down together enough times she's going to get this happy family that she's so fixated on. You give in. You give her one hour, and you go back inside.

Soon as you sit down, it's one jibe after another, jab, jab, jab, and you sit there and take it like you used to take it when it was his fists doing the jabbing. But you can't be hiding your discomfort too well because he says to you, "Ah, take a joke, why don't you? Such a sensitive wee soul." _You were a sweet little thing, wouldn't say boo to a goose. _That was why your dad chose you, wasn't it? He chose you because of it, and despised you because of it. Despises, because he can still sense it in you even though you try to hide it. And it never did you any good: he kept on holding you down and hurting you even though you cried, and so you stopped crying, but it was too late because he already knew how weak you were, and how tainted.

"Such a sensitive wee soul," he says, then he comes out with this story about how when you were a kid you broke a vase that you'd got for Cheryl's mum one Christmas, and you stayed in your room til Boxing Day because you were upset. It's a sad story, but it's not true, and you try to grab the truth – at least this one truth – back from him. "You broke it," you tell him. You saw him do it and saw him put it back on the shelf, and you remember the injustice you felt when it was his lies that were believed when he blamed you for it. He doesn't flinch when you put him right, and he doesn't waver: "You broke it," he says back at you, and you remember the lesson you learnt that Christmas, that people would believe your dad over you, even when you needed to be believed, even when what you wanted to say was true.

You've lost your appetite. You give Cheryl's shoulder a squeeze as you go out, just to tell her it's not her that you're walking out on.

You want to go straight round to Steven's, but you go to the club instead. You can't go running to him – crying to him – every time your dad turns the screws. It's not what he signed up for, is it? If he loves you, the man he fell in love with isn't the one he's seen crumbling in his arms: that wasn't what he bargained for. If he'd wanted a man who was weak and unsure and needed looking after, he wouldn't have left Douglas for you. Steven thought you'd taken the power back from your dad, because you told him you had, and he's never seen you scared of anyone, and you can't keep letting him see that Seamus still scares you, because he's going to start to wonder what it is that you aren't telling him.

Cheryl comes to find you at Chez Chez. You're alone there in the office, and she lets rip. You've ruined things for her and her dad, again. He's going to be left thinking you don't love him. If you tell him you're gay, he'll understand. Jesus, Cheryl doesn't have a clue, and you can't put her right, because if you do you'll be poisoning every single memory she's got, and you can't do that to her. Seamus will be going home soon anyhow, so if you can just get by til then, you can all let it lie again. Only, then Cheryl tells you that if you don't tell your dad that you're gay, she will.

That's decided you on one thing: you can't go round to see Steven tonight. While Cheryl's in this frame of mind you don't dare leave her alone with your dad in case she makes up her mind and tells him. At least if you're there you can maybe deflect her; plead with her if you have to. And there's another thing, and that's that Joel is back from visiting his mum in Glasgow or Aberdeen or Loch fucking Ness, and you're uneasy knowing that he's sleeping one door along from Seamus. You don't even know what you're worrying about – you don't know that your dad ever bothered anyone but you – but Joel's just a kid, so. It's better if you're in the house.

You lie awake in the night wishing your dad was gone for good. You think about Steven too, and you think that since you came back from Dublin with him and were faced with your dad, you've been getting more from Steven than Steven's been getting from you. More support, more concern; he's been feeding you and taking you into his home, his bed, and you're thinking again, this isn't what he must have expected when he made his choice and chose you. He didn't choose to have a dependent, and it's not like he needs another mouth to feed: you've seen the way he has to stretch his money to make things right for his kids. So in the morning, you call round to see him at the deli.

You've got something for him. "Here," you tell him, "I want you to take this," and you hand him an envelope. There's cash in it, a few hundred. He's suspicious, and shoves it back at you. "What's this for?" he says, and so you explain, "I didn't get you... I didn't get Leah and Lucas anything for Christmas, did I. I've had things on my mind, Steven, you know that, and I been relying on you too much, so this is just..." Fuck, get a grip and man up: that's the whole point. "Take it, Steven. Get the kids something, and get something for yourself. Okay?"

He frowns at you for a moment, then he says, quietly, "You don't have to, Bren. You're meant to rely on me, like I'm meant to rely on you. That's what boyf – "

"You taking it or not?"

"Ta." He takes the envelope again, and he puts a hand on your shoulder and kisses you. His mouth tastes of coffee. Then he looks up at you and he asks, "What d'you want me to get, then?" and he bites his lip, and then you bite it for him.

"Get something to wear," you tell him, and you head for the door then stop and turn back to him. "Just not _chinos_. Anything but chinos, okay?"

He didn't ask about the source of the cash, and you wonder if he'll keep on turning a blind eye. There must be conditions to his love, mustn't there? It must be contingent on more than that you don't batter him again. There is more wrong than right with the way you live, and you can't believe that a man like him, with the options he has – he could find a better man than you in a heartbeat, a better man than Douglas too, if he went looking – is going to carry on wanting you the way you are.

He calls into the club after he finishes work, and you tell him you're working until late and you'd better sleep at home again. He looks put out, and you tell him it's complicated but once your dad goes back to Ireland it'll be different. And then it's like old times: you go into the office with him, and unlike the old times you remember to lock the door.

Before he runs off, late, to pick up his kids, you comb his hair with your fingers to give him the illusion of respectability, and he brushes the dirt from the floor off his knees.

:::::::

This morning, you get a text from him, _Buy u a coffee? Xx,_ and resistance is futile. On your way out of the house you see Cheryl and Seamus looking at old photographs, evidence of a normal, happy family life. Photographs lie, and they'd make you a liar if you tried to say, _That's not how it was_.

Steven's already got the coffees when you get to the cafe, so you walk him to work. _This_ feels normal. The coffee doesn't taste normal though, and you spit it out, and apparently he's cut down the sugar for you because three is too many and he doesn't want to be going out with a _tubby. _Okay, so now Steven's trying to tell you how to live your life, on top of Cheryl trying to make you come out to your dad. And he's agreeing with her too, he thinks it might be a good idea to tell Seamus; only at least you're not getting threats from Steven. He's not going to _out_ you. You tell him you're not ashamed of you and him, and it's true, it's just that the less Seamus knows about your life, the better.

Joel shows up then, and you break it to him fairly gently that you're no longer selling the club. You'd have thought he would have worked that out for himself once you'd come back from Dublin, but it seems he hadn't, and he's not a happy Foxy.

You go to work.

:::::::

You're in your office at the club, feet up on the desk, and you find yourself smiling. _I don't want to be going out with a tubby, do I?_ You're not smiling at the _tubby_ part – the cheeky little bastard, you need to set him straight about that – but it's the _going out with_ part that sounds good. You've never used those words about yourself, except when you and Eileen were teenagers in the brief time before you were married teenagers; and you never thought you would, but there's Steven saying it without giving it a thought. When all you can see is problems, he un-complicates things.

You put on your coat and cross the road to the deli.

Cheryl's there. "Ah, Bren," she says, "I was just saying to Ste here that the longer you leave it til you come out to Dad, the more chance there is that he's gonna hear it from someone else, so why – ?"

"The 'someone else' being you, yeah?"

"No. No, I didn't mean I was gonna do that, Brendan, I was just angry, but I really think it's for the best, don't you? It's not like I'm asking you and Daddy to go to Pride together..."

Jesus. You tell her to stop. You're getting angry, and you're both shouting now, and she thinks telling your dad that you're gay will fix your family. You turn your back on her and when you glance out of the shop window you see Seamus, and in his arms he's holding a child, a boy. You're out of the door and you see that it's Charlie, and you see the girl he's with and you push some cash at her and tell her to take the kid to the cinema, and you tell your dad, "Put him down."

The girl and Charlie go, and your dad asks you what that was about. Does he not know? Or is he daring you to say it, this thing that you and him have never once spoken about? You can't, and you turn from him, but he stops you: "I asked you a question."

"Protection," you say, and it's the closest you've ever come to calling him out on what he is. And you look at him, and he looks as if he can't believe what you're suggesting, and he says, "What?" and you can tell he's agitated. "You heard me," you say, and that's all it takes. He comes at you, and you stand your ground, and you've proved something although you're not sure what: a weakness in him, a chink in his armour is it? Anyhow it's over before it's started, because Steven appears at your shoulder, and Seamus gets control of himself before he even touches you.

You hear Cheryl's voice behind you, and then Steven's telling her it's nothing, and to get back inside. He doesn't know what's happened, but he knows the signs, he knows that Cheryl better not push you right now. You follow them into the deli and you say to Cheryl what Steven said to her, "It's nothing, Chez, it was nothing, okay?" And what she says is, "Is Dad okay?" and you look through the window and you see him still standing out there. "Is _Dad_ okay?" you say to your sister. Because it's your dad that matters here, course it is.

You leave the deli. Seamus tries to grab your arm as you walk past him but you don't let him stop you, you make for the club. Joel's in there just before you, you saw him from over the road as he went in there from Price Slice. And just after you is Seamus. He's getting on at you, "Don't walk away from me, boy, who do you think you are, humiliating me like that? I want an explanation." Joel backs you up, "Spot of bother?" and Steven's on Seamus's heels, running in, "Brendan, is everything alright?"

"It's okay, Steven, it's over," you say, but your dad isn't letting it drop, he's getting his defence in first. He tells you – tells them – that you've always had a temper, and then he starts telling this story about a camping trip you went on with him when you were a kid, and he's telling it by way of illustrating how you always ruin everything. You can't believe he's chosen to bring it up. Father/son bonding, he calls it, but you remember the trip too, and you remember what happened there. You challenge him: "You mean when I went home with a broken arm and a bust lip, that the one?" And he looks at you how he looks at you when he's going to punch you.

"Why?" Steven asks. "Why, what happened?"

"What happened, Dad?" You're daring him now, but what he says is that you fell out of a tree, and it's like when he said you broke the vase: anyone would think Seamus Brady was telling the truth.

"You know what, I think you need to go, now," Steven says, angry, and maybe he isn't falling for what your dad is saying, but what he's done is he's drawn his fire. Seamus turns around to look at him and says, "And why would I listen to you?"

Steven doesn't answer because Joel gets in there first.

"He didn't mean anything by it. He's just playing the role of supportive boyfriend, aren't you, Ste?"

There's silence now. You're aware how cold the air is, yet you feel yourself start to sweat.

Joel realises what he's done.

Seamus realises what you are.

"_Boyfriend_?" He laughs. "Tell me this is a joke." You see disgust in his eyes, and hatred. He turns and pushes past Steven on his way out.

Nobody says anything for a minute. You feel nauseous, and you have to lean on the bar because you feel as if you might fall. Steven comes to your side, touches your back, and you straighten up, and then you lunge at Joel and grab him, and he's saying, "I thought he knew. I swear, I thought he knew," and you want to kill him but Steven's there and he's pulling you off him, and you let him stop you. "Out," you say to Joel. "Get out."

"No," Steven says, "No, he can mind this place. We're going, Brendan, come on."

"It's my day off," Joel says, and you want to swing for him again, but again Steven stops you. He says to Joel, "Then you sort out someone to cover for Brendan, right?" And then he says to you, "Come on, let's go."

You wonder then where Cheryl is, but Steven tells you he told her to mind the deli when he ran out after you and your dad. He tells you to head for his flat; he's going to lock up his shop if Chez can't stay there, and he'll catch you up. You do as he tells you.

You've been sitting on his doorstep for a few minutes when he gets home. He's breathless, like he's been running.

"Sorry," he says as you both go inside, "I had to put all the food away in the fridges, and put a note on the door, and... I told Cheryl what happened."

"She happy now, is she?"

"Bit upset, I'd say. She's gone to find your dad."

"Course she has."

Steven puts his keys down and takes off his jacket; he comes to you and puts his arms around you, and it's happening again, he's being the strong one again and you're leaning on him, again. It's not right, but you hold onto him anyway, because he's all that's stopping you from crashing to the ground. Then he puts the kettle on.

You sit down together. He's trying to find a way that this is a good thing, that maybe it'll be some kind of turning point. "I know you two have had your problems – " he starts, but you stop him. He doesn't know the half of it, nobody knows what your dad is really like and that building bridges is not a possibility. Then he asks you about that camping trip, and you tell him some of it. You tell him you didn't want to go. You tell him that what Seamus said about it wasn't how it was, at all. You never climbed a tree or fell out of one.

You watch him, his face, as he processes what you're telling him and tries to figure out what you're not telling him. There is not even a flicker that you can see in him to suggest that he doubts what you're saying; but he knows he hasn't got the full picture.

"I don't get it, how did you break your arm and everything then?" he asks, and you can't look at him then, and you can't say it, so what you say is, "How do you think?" and you risk meeting his eyes as the penny drops, and when he says, "He did it," he doesn't look like he's judging you. He just looks sad. And then he thinks for a moment, and then he asks you, "And is that when it all started?"

He knows. Does he? Does he know? Has he worked it out for himself? In the two or three seconds before he speaks again, your mind races and you feel a shock of relief that he knows, and you'll never have to tell him because all you'll have to do is wait for him to ask the question, and you will say _Yes. _And he's not recoiling from you even though he knows now how degraded you are. He's not shrinking away from you.

"And is that when it all started?" He knows. Does he? Does he know? "The beatings."

_The beatings_. He means the beatings. You let out the breath that you hadn't realised you were holding.

"Before," you say. "Started before, only this time it was because I... I couldn't put up the tent properly."

"So he beat you up just because you put a tent up wrong?" He's angry now.

"Yeah. Yeah, pretty much." You hid the poles that were meant to hold it up, because you thought if the tent wouldn't stay up, you wouldn't have to sleep in it with him, and he would take you home instead; only, he found the poles and beat you with them. Steven doesn't need to know that. So yeah, pretty much.

He can't understand why you didn't tell anyone, and you tell him you couldn't, because God help anyone who goes against what Seamus Brady says. So he thinks again, and accepts what you've said, and you see him reach for a thought that will bring you some comfort: he tells you that it'll be over soon because Seamus is leaving tomorrow. You can tell that it brings comfort to him, too. "Can't come fast enough," you say. But you don't tell him that it will never be over for you, not while your father is out there.

He's got to go out and fetch the kids home. "You won't go anywhere, though, Brendan, will you? You'll still be here when I get back?" You nod, and he kisses you on the cheek before he goes. While he's gone you go over your conversation in your head. He was outraged that your dad beat you up for putting a tent up wrong, but you've beaten Steven up for less. For loving you, sometimes, and your doubts overwhelm you again, and you wonder how much or how little it would take to make him realise that you are no good.

You're putting your coat back on, and you're going to get out of his hair, but then the front door opens and the kids burst in, and Leah stops dead in front of you and says, "Why are you wearing your coat?"

"I was just – "

"Daddy said you're staying for tea."

Steven looks as if he might rugby tackle you if you try to get out the door. You take off your coat.

:::::::

It was a noisy mealtime, and a noisy playtime; bath time was chaotic, and bedtime was drawn-out, but now it's quiet. Steven comes back from tucking his children in, and asks if you're alright. The fact is, you are, at least compared with how you would have been if you hadn't been slap in the middle of this little family of his, where there's no time to sit and be morose. He sits down beside you, and you put your arm around him. "You'll stay here tonight, won't you," he says, "And then you might not even see your dad tomorrow before he goes."

And then there's a knock at the door. Steven goes and answers it, and you hear him say, "We don't want any trouble," and you know who it is then. It's your dad. Cheryl's brought him, and you look at her past Steven in the doorway, and she says to you, "Bren, Dad's got something he wants to say to you." Steven turns around and asks you, "Brendan?" and Cheryl says, "Please, Brendan." You shrug. Steven asks if you're sure. "Five minutes," you say to your sister, and Steven lets them in with a warning that the kids are asleep so if they want a row they can forget it.

They sit down. You and Steven stand, together. You don't look at Seamus, but it's enough knowing that he's here in this place which you've got used to seeing as a refuge, and now he's making it feel cramped and threatened.

You get the feeling that Cheryl's told the old man what to say, but he goes off message. He says he's shocked to the core: "It's the last thing I would've expected of my son." Cheryl prompts him, "But..?" and he goes on, "But, like it or not, you are my son, and I suppose I'm going to have to live with it, haven't I." You almost laugh. This is bullshit, he couldn't be any more grudging if he tried, but he stands up and he puts his hand out, and you're looking at him now and he's got this kind of half smile on his face, and Cheryl says, "Bren, please?" and everything's fucked up. This man who did those things to you when you were too small to stop him, is expecting you to show that you're grateful that he'll _live with_ the fact that you're gay, and your sister will be gutted if you don't.

And then Steven says to you, "You don't have to do anything that you don't want to do, okay?" and you look at him, and you see the one person who's on your side, the one person who's given you the choice. So you get it over with. You shake Seamus's hand. He smiles, but you don't.

Cheryl's delighted. She's got Champagne, for fucksake. You follow her into the kitchen, and you tell her, quietly, that you did it for her, not for your dad. She doesn't care why you did it, she's just glad because everything will be easier now. "Why are you so bothered anyway?" you ask her, "He's going home tomorrow, ain't he?"

"No I'm not, son." Seamus has overheard. "Cheryl's persuaded me to stay for good, haven't you, love."

Your sister's betrayed you, tricked you. You feel as if the future you've started to hope for is slipping away.

She hands your dad a glass of Champagne and takes one to Steven. Seamus comes over to you. "Looks like I was right, Brenda," he says, quiet so it's only you that hears him, and the others only see the smile that he flashes for their benefit. "I always knew you were a dirty little faggot."

You square up to him but then you walk away. There are children asleep a few feet away, and like Steven said, you don't want any trouble, not in this house.

Cheryl tries to make conversation, but it's a losing battle and before long she admits defeat, and she and your dad get going. Seamus has one more thing to say to you though, with a smile as Steven shows them out: "I'll say one thing for you, son. You did well to find a _boyfriend_ who's got children of his own. Ready-made family for you, very cosy."

You feel sick. You've put Steven into his sights, and you've brought Leah and Lucas into his orbit.

Steven starts clearing up. He picks up the bottle, which is more than half full. "You want some?" he asks, and you shake your head, and he pours it down the sink. You love him.

You send Joel a text, _Meet me in alley 10 mins._

Steven sees you getting your coat on.

"You're not going? Brendan, you can't go home."

"I'm just gonna check on the club. I shoulda been there tonight, so."

"But you're coming back?"

"Yeah. Half an hour, tops."

You don't kiss him. What you've got to do has nothing to do with him and you don't want to touch him while this thought is in your head.

:::::::

Joel is expecting you to batter him, but that's not what you want him for. He owes you, even more now than he did when you disposed of his stepdad for him; so you tell him, as he shivers in front of you in the alleyway, that you're going to give him two hundred grand, and what he's going to do for the money – and to repay his debt to you – is, he's going to sign over his share in the club to you, and he's going to kill your dad.

It's the only way. It's the only way to be sure that your dirty secret will stay buried. It's the only way that you can keep Steven, and keep his family safe. It's the only way that you've got a shot at a future.

You tell Joel you'll talk details with him tomorrow. The kid looks scared, and he's too shocked to do anything but mumble his disbelief at what you're wanting him to do. You tell him to go home and act natural, for fucksake, and you turn and head back to Steven's place. You're on an adrenalin rush just from making the decision and saying it out loud, and it's making you jumpy. Is it making you dangerous? If it is, you can't put Steven in the way of that, and you almost change your mind about going back there. Trouble is, you need him. You need right now to have someone look at you as if they don't think you're a freak, and right now Steven is the only one, and he'll remind you why you're planning to commit this mortal sin, and for a while at least, he will make you forget that you are.

You walk around the block until you can't feel your heart rattling any more and you're no longer primed for fight or flight. It's safe now to go to Steven. Safe for him.

He takes a while to come to the door: maybe he's given up on you coming back, as you've taken longer than you promised.

When he opens the door he's wearing a towel around his waist, but not for long. It drops to the floor as you back him rapidly into his bedroom. His skin is wet as you pull his body against yours and slide your hands over his back. "Something happened?" he asks you as you move from kissing his mouth to kissing his neck. He knows you too well.

"Nothing." Nothing's happened. Something's going to happen, soon, but nothing's happened yet. "Nothing. Just today, weird day, you know?"

You've shrugged off your coat, and he's got your top off now. You take his cock and his balls and his wet pubic hair in your fist and he gasps, and he bites your collar bone, hard, and the pain shivers over the whole of you. He smells faintly of soap, but that's all; he hasn't sprayed himself with anything, and you're glad about that because you don't like his own scent to be masked. When you first knew him, he smelt of Lynx.

You move your hands to his shoulders and step back from him. He tries to come close to you again but you stop him, "No, I wanna see you," and you go and switch on the bedside lamp, and you look at him as you finish stripping off. He's breathing hard already, his stomach turning concave with every breath out. You've given him a semi, and his hand goes to it, but you tell him, "Don't touch." He tuts at you, "Bossy, innt you," and he turns and gets the stuff from the top of the wardrobe – condoms, lubricant – and you know he's done that just so you'll look at his body as he stretches up with his back to you. He used to be shy when you looked at him, but these days, not so much.

You grab him, land on the bed and pull him down on top of you. He rubs himself on you like a cat. All your senses are engaged now, and the outside world is receding.

Steven's teasing you now, making out he's going to kiss you but pulling away as the tip of his tongue touches your lips. Twice he leans down on you and does that. The third time he tries it, you grab his hair and make him kiss you properly. He laughs into your mouth, and then he starts kissing and licking your neck and across your chest; he stretches your arm up and tongues you from your armpit to the palm of your hand. Out of nowhere you find yourself feeling self conscious: you're suddenly aware that you haven't had a shower since this morning, and you sweated when Joel brought the roof crashing down, and again when Seamus came to this flat and called you a faggot, and again after you lit the fuse on your plan. You're dirty, and Steven is clean. The only sweat he smells of is brand new.

He's unfazed. Nobody has ever handled your body like he does. It feels as if he loves you.

He sits up. He's kneeling astride you, perched on your thighs, and you use his weight to lever yourself up to face him, and you whisper in his ear, "Turn around." You lie back down, and he clambers off you and on again so he's facing your feet. He's sitting on your stomach now and your cock is right there in front of him: he grasps it and strokes it from root to tip with one hand then the other. You scrape your finger nails down his spine, and he arches it away from you. Then he finds a condom where he'd tossed it onto the bed, rips it open and quickly unrolls it onto you, then reaches for the lube and hands it to you. He kneels forward onto all fours, his hands planted either side of your ankles. The lube is cold, and he flinches when you stroke the first fingerful onto him.

You've got him ready now, and he gets into position for you to nudge the head of your cock against his rim, and as he lowers himself onto you he leans forward over your legs to give you a better view of your cock sliding into him: he knows you love that. He's stretched around you, and as he moves, his breaths ratchet in his throat. He's going to come soon, and you will too, but you stop it. You tell him to get off you. You hold the rubber in place with one hand and give him a push with the other, and once you're out of him, you wrangle him onto his back. He lets you, because he knows he's going to like what you do next. You part his thighs and get between them, and take hold of his cock and close your mouth over it. The fingers of your other hand keep him open, and as you suck him you feel inside him. He's cursing now, _fuck _after _fuck_, and then his voice becomes muffled and you look up and see that he's holding a pillow over his face to keep his noise down, because it's impossible for him not to cry out.

His cum is hot in your throat. You move up his body and rip the pillow away, and kiss him, and you know that he tastes himself in your mouth. You push your cock into him where your fingers were – it's easy, his resistance is gone, but then his skills kick in and he tightens around you. You watch his face as you thrust deep inside him. He's taking his pleasure as if it's his right, his hands are gripping your arse, his mouth is open, panting, and his eyes are locked on your eyes. He amazes you. The look of him pushes you over the edge, and you come.

:::::::

In the bathroom, you get rid of the condom and you wash yourself, and you try not to think about tomorrow.

When you get back into bed, you think Steven has fallen asleep but he opens his eyes and smiles at you, and touches your cheek. You take his hand and kiss his fingers, and you think that if he knew what has been done to you, and what it's driven you to do, it would be impossible for him ever to look at you like this again.


	6. Chapter 6

You wake up in his bed, but he's not there.

It's morning, and you panic for a moment that you should have gone home in the early hours like you usually do so that your dad wouldn't know you hadn't slept in your own bed, and wouldn't question where you'd been. Then you remember: it doesn't matter any more, because Seamus found out yesterday that you're gay and that Steven Hay is your boyfriend. And then you remember that it was Joel whose mouth ran away with him and betrayed you, and it's Joel who will be paying you back.

The bedroom door opens, and Steven comes into the room and sits on the edge of the bed. He's dressed for work. He's got a mug of coffee for you; you sit up and he hands it to you, and you flinch as your hands momentarily touch.

"You alright?" he says. Then, "It's gonna be alright, Brendan."

You take a few gulps of coffee and give him back the mug, then you scoot over to the side of the bed farthest from him and get up, find your clothes on the floor and get dressed. You don't look at him, but you can feel his eyes on you, and you know he must be trying to make sense of why you're being so cold to him, when last night you were so intimate.

You leave the room and pick your coat up, and you head for the door. He follows you; you can't resist a glance at his face, and what you see there is concern, and hurt.

"I gotta go to work," you tell him. "It's not... I'm not running out on you, okay?" This is not the same as when you used to deny him after you'd had him, and you need him to know that.

"Okay," he says, but you can see the doubt in him, and you can't tell him that you can't be around him or his children today, because today you are going to put into action the plan that you decided on last night, to kill your father.

"I'll call you," you tell him.

"Okay," he says again.

"I will call you, Steven."

He steps towards you then, but you evade his kiss. "Kids, so," you say, as Leah appears in the hallway, but the truth is, you don't care if his children see their dad kissing you. You just don't want him anywhere near the version of you that you are today.

:::::::

You don't see anyone at first when you get home. Seamus is already out somewhere, and Cheryl too, you think. When you come out of the bathroom you quietly open the door of Joel's room, but he isn't there. His bed's been slept in, though, so he didn't do a runner after you'd told him last night in the alley what he is going to do for you. When he said to you that he doesn't run away any more, he was telling the truth.

You get dressed in a suit, and you go to the club. You don't call Joel: he will come to you sooner or later, because this is the kind of thing that he can't let lie. Then you'll have to convince him to go through with it, because you don't think he understands yet that once these things have been spoken of, there is no going back. You need to figure out what it'll take to persuade him.

You've found a discrepancy in the takings from last night: one till is precisely eighty pounds short, and you're in the office, fast-forwarding through the CCTV trying to spot which one of the bar staff you need to fire. You haven't got far into the evening's footage when you see something more interesting than a bit of light theft. You see Theresa McQueen, Joel's girlfriend, kissing a lad that isn't Joel. It's one of the Savage boys, not the weirdo brother that Theresa used to run with – what the fuck was that about? – but the other one, Mark, the funsize wheeler-dealer with the waxed chest.

This is your convincer. God or the Devil must be on your side.

You hear someone coming and you look up, and it's Seamus. This office is small but now it feels smaller. He's in the doorway and he's here to show his contempt for you, now that he knows you're gay if he didn't before. He runs through the things you've got: your car, your business, "And then there's your boyfriend, _Ste_." Steven's name on his lips feels like a threat. You follow Seamus out of the office. "Your mother would be proud of you," he says, meaning the opposite, but what does he know about what your mother would have felt, when she was too fucking scared to say anything but what he wanted to hear? He tells you that Cheryl's doing lunch at home and she wants you there. Jesus, wasn't yesterday enough for her, when she watched you shake hands with your father even though the touch of his hand made you shrink? He tells you to bring your boyfriend, but that's the last thing you'd do. You don't want Seamus anywhere near Steven, and soon you will make sure he never is.

It's playing into your hands though, this meal of Cheryl's. You want to keep tabs on your dad today.

Joel makes his entrance, like you knew he would, but his timing's shit with Seamus still there. "Ah, here he is," your dad says, "The lodger." He asks the kid how much rent he pays you, and Joel says he doesn't, and you know what Seamus is thinking. Jesus. And then Joel says, "I pay Cheryl." Seamus doesn't let that stop him insinuating though. "Live together," he says to Joel, "Work together, play together. That's nice." Then he turns back to you: "Always good to have a back-up plan, eh son?" He thinks you're with Steven to feed your appetite, and when you get jaded you'll swap him for fresher meat. He doesn't know you at all.

You don't retaliate, and neither does Joel.

Seamus goes, telling you to be home at twelve: "Don't be late."

You take Joel into the office, and the first thing he says is, he's not going to kill your dad, not for anything. He's scared, you can tell just looking at him, and you don't raise your voice but you scare him more. He knows what you are capable of, and he asks you why you don't do it yourself, but the fact is, you've discovered that that is one thing you are not capable of. "Kill my own father?" you say to him, "What kind of monster do you take me for?" You've killed one man, and his eyes looking at you still haunt your dreams; if they were the eyes of your father, you would never get away from him.

You ask him if he's happy with the hand he's been dealt: him and Theresa, building a future together. And then you show him that the the cards he's holding aren't as strong as he thinks. He can't stand to look at the images on the screen of Theresa and Mark, and he can't stand not to look either. You've rattled him: looks like right now you're the only certainty he's got in this life. He walks out of the office but you call out to him, and you remind him about how the world works: "If I do something for you, I expect you to do something for me."

"Mick," he says, and you think he's getting it now, and you press the point, and he tells you you're twisted.

You're close to him now, close enough to hear the tremble in his breath that he's trying to hide, and you tell him, "If you do a deal with the Devil, one day the Devil will want paying back. It's simple."

"I'm not you. I'm not my – "

"Warren. I know you're not. You never will be. That's a good thing." This boy will always be troubled by what he's done and by what he's going to do. Joel is not a natural born killer.

You tell him that the world will be a better place without Seamus. That's all he needs to know, but he knows there's something you're not telling him that's deep and dark. He knows that your dad can't be battering you, like his stepdad was still doing to him up until a day or two before he fell off that lighthouse. He knows that there must be something that's compelling you to order this death. He wants to know _why_.

You blank his enquiries with a reminder of the cold hard cash. Everyone has their price, and you've found his: two hundred thousand will be enough to give a lad his age a head start anywhere. No amount of money will be enough to make his nightmares go away – nor the new nightmares that doing this job for you will give him – but that's for him to find out. He'll live and learn.

You don't know what it is that makes him agree to it in the end. The money helps, but fear of you is part of it too, you guess, and a gut understanding of the natural law of _quid pro quo_. "If I do this," he says, and his face is pale as a ghost, "Then me and you – "

"There is no me and you after this, kid."

:::::::

You leave the club and buy a newspaper in Price Slice, then you walk to the Dog. It's not long been open, and it's quiet. Darren is there: the man you're looking for. You sit on a stool at the bar.

"Starting early, Brendan," Darren says. You glare at him as if he's over-stepped the mark, and he smiles at you nervously and says, "What can I get you?" You ask for a Jameson's. You like playing with him, but you'd better tone down the menace today because you want something from him.

You open your paper and turn to the racing page, and make sure you're poring over it when Darren brings you your drink.

He bites.

"Your dad got you interested in the horses, has he?" he asks. You wonder how he knows that Seamus is a betting man, but anyhow, it's the opening you were after.

"Not like he is," you say. "Studying form, all that side of it? Not a clue, I might as well stick a pin in. You?"

The thing about Darren is, he's wary of you – scared might be a better word – but he wants to impress you. It's a combination you like the taste of, and you've made the most of that particular cocktail with other lads in other contexts in the past. Anyhow, it's not long before he's going through the runners and riders, giving you tips, and you pay close attention. There's one horse in the three-thirty that's got longish odds but enough of a chance of winning, according to Darren at least, that with the right jargon it might sound like an insider tip.

You've got what you came for, so you finish your drink and stand up.

"So, you gonna try your luck, then?" Darren asks you. You raise an eyebrow at him: "Well I would, Goldilocks, but I'm taken."

He looks panicky and embarrassed, and tries to cover both things up. "The horses, I meant," he says, "You know, put a bet on... Not that there's anything wrong with – "

You put him out of his misery.

"Knew what you meant. No, Darren, it's a mug's game, and I'm no mug."

"Too right," he says. You've heard stories about his old gambling habit; once, you played on this weakness of his just because you were bored, but you must be going soft or something, because seeing his discomfort about it is giving you no pleasure at all right now.

You turn to go, but you stop and you ask him, "How's the kid getting along?"

"Charlie? Yeah, he's right as rain now, thanks to your dad."

You flinch at that.

"Just.. watch him, okay?"

"Course. A scare like that, we've learnt our lesson."

He thinks you meant watch Charlie, but you meant, watch Seamus. It's when you're walking home and you remember that soon no one will need to watch Seamus any more, that you get a sense that the clouds are beginning to part.

You call Joel as you walk, and you fill him in.

:::::::

Turns out, Cheryl wanted you there at midday, but your dad's not going to be back til later. For once you're sorry not to see him because you need to do a bit of father/son bonding. You give Cheryl a hand in the kitchen to pass the time, but as soon as Seamus turns up you leave her to it and go and sit down with him – him on one sofa, you on the other. You rarely exchange more than a few words with your father, so you need to take your time to make it not seem too fucking obvious when you steer the stilted conversation around to the subject of racing, and how there's this punter in the club you got talking to, some kind of high roller, who wouldn't shut up about this horse running in the three-thirty that is going to make him a killing.

You almost laugh when your dad's ears prick up and suddenly he's interested in what you've got to say. He picks up the paper and scrutinises the form, and you hold your breath til he nods and says, "Could be." Darren's not just a pretty face, then. Your dad wants a part of that killing.

:::::::

Having extracted from you the one and only thing you have to say about horse racing, your dad reverts to his usual drip, drip, drip of innuendo and jokes at your expense, but for once you feel that you have the upper hand. You know something he doesn't know, and soon he won't be poisoning your life any more. You don't feel relaxed – you feel a stomach-churning mixture of euphoria and dread – but you act it. You act as if this is a normal family meal, when you know, and your dad knows, that for you two there's no such thing. Once or twice, you catch him looking at you as if he knows that something is going on.

Eventually he gets up from the table. He's off to the bookies to put that bet on.

You send Joel a text, _He's on his way._ And then you wait.

:::::::

You're jumpy. You keep checking your phone, even though it's in your hand most of the time and you couldn't possibly miss it if it vibrated with a text coming in. You think something's gone wrong. Joel can't have got him on the way to the betting shop or you'd have heard hours ago. So he must have had to wait til Seamus left there – or til he left whichever pub he'd have gone to to celebrate his win or drown his losses.

You start wanting it not to have happened. It's against nature for a son to kill his father, even if it's not your hand on the cosh, and even if a father has done things to a son that are against nature.

Cheryl's a happy girl. You don't take in most of her chatter because your mind is elsewhere, but you get that she's glad you made such an effort to get on with your dad today, and she's pleased you're staying in with her tonight. Guilt comes over you in waves, but you don't call Joel to try to halt it if it's not too late. And then you find out that it is. A text from the kid, two words, banal: _It's Done._

You were expecting to feel triumphant, or at least relieved, but all you feel is empty.

Cheryl puts a film on and you sit through it with her.

You remember that you told Steven this morning that you would call him, and you haven't, you don't want him anywhere near this. You text him instead: _Staying home with Chez tonight._ He doesn't text back though, he phones, and Cheryl sees that it's him so you can't not pick up.

"Hiya," he says, and his voice is like a drink of water. "Is everything alright?"

"Course, why wouldn't it be?"

"You was a bit funny with me this morning, that's all."

"You know me, Steven. Not a morning person."

There's a pause, and he must decide there's no point probing any more, because you can hear him smiling as he says, "I don't know. You have your moments."

You can picture him, this man who accepts you with all your flaws – at least the ones he knows about – and you want nothing more than to go to him and let him make you believe, while you're with him, that you're not a monster. But you can't. Cheryl is your alibi, so you're staying home til morning.

:::::::

You barely sleep. You listen out for Joel coming in, but he doesn't, and you worry. And when you do drift off, you're assaulted by dreams. You dream that your dad comes into your bedroom: you're a child, and his eyes when you look up at him are as black as his beard. The first time, he starts on you before you wake up. When you fall back to sleep hours later you have the same dream again, but you're the age you are now, and your dad is the age he is now, and he comes into your bedroom, and he says, "Sleep well did you, son?" and the terror jolts you awake.

You don't try and sleep after that, but you feel better after you've showered and dressed.

Joel gets home, and Cheryl calls him a dirty stop-out: she tells you both that Seamus didn't come home either. You ask her if he texted, and she says she hasn't heard a word from him. A text from Seamus's phone was part of the plan, to make your sister accept that this was just another of his routine disappearances that punctuated your childhood. You glare at Joel. The poor kid looks haunted, but still you'll be knocking a few grand off the two hundred for that, as the price for not saving Cheryl from worrying. The look of him confirms to you that he really did do the job though, and it's beginning to sink in with you that the old man is gone for ever.

As you go out and walk down the steps to go to work, you feel as if your future can start. You're going to call into the deli, but when you look through the window there's a queue, and Steven is looking concentrated. You haven't seen him in more than twenty-four hours, and the sight of him makes your heart lurch. You don't think he'd appreciate the interruption though, so you leave it and go to the club.

You give it a few minutes, then you go out onto the balcony and look down at the deli. There's only one customer in there now as far as you can see from here; you wait for her to leave, and then you dial Steven's number.

"Morning," you say.

"Morning. Alright?"

"So... I was gonna say, sorry, you know, for being..."

"A moody bastard?"

"Yeah."

"Yeah, well, I'm used to it by now, innt I. You at work today?"

"Mmhm."

"Me too."

"I know, I can see you." You see him come to the window of the deli, then he opens the door and looks up at you.

"You spying on me, you perv?"

"Just taking in the view, Steven."

He goes back inside, pausing in the doorway to wiggle his backside.

:::::::

It's mid-morning and you're back downstairs, paperwork spread out in front of you on the bar. The club isn't open yet, but you hear someone come in and you look up as Steven says, "I've brought you some breakfast. Don't say I don't do anything for you," and he throws a paper sandwich bag from the deli down on top of the papers you've been working on. He's breezy, like this is normal. It is normal for normal people, and he makes you believe this can be normal for you too.

He leans on the bar and smiles up at you, looking mighty pleased with himself.

"Well that is very thoughtful, Steven," you tell him, and he nods, and you come out from behind the bar. "There is something else you can do for me." He straightens up as you stop right in front of him, and you look at his eyes for a second, and then you whisper, right in his ear so you know he feels the heat of your breath: "Take off your clothes."

That was you, being seductive. His reply, "What, in 'ere?" is him being the stroppy little fucker he was when you used to tell him to get on with his work, two and more years ago. That's how this is going to go, is it? Interesting.

"Nobody's watching," you tell him, and he rolls his eyes, but he takes off his jacket and starts unbuttoning his shirt anyway.

He reckons something's put you in a good mood, and you tell him that you feel like spreading the joy, and you can't resist any longer. You grab a hold of his head and you kiss him.

The door bangs, and you and Steven break apart. It's Joel. You tell him he's interrupting, but Steven says, "Don't matter, I should get back anyway," and starts buttoning his shirt up again. You're not having that: you don't want Joel here reminding you of what you've done, and displacing Steven, who's part of the life you did it for. Steven's kinder than you though. He asks Joel if he's alright, and the kid looks dazed, now that you look at him properly. He says he's seen Theresa, and finished with her. You put an arm around him to guide him out; you tell him to go for a walk then get some sleep, and you'll talk to him when he's calmed down. You don't trust him not to say something stupid in front of Steven.

You watch him go.

When you turn back to Steven, he's got his jacket on.

"Oi, did I tell you to get dressed?"

He smiles, and starts undressing again. You walk to the door and slide the bolt across. No more interruptions; no more outside world.

You stand back and watch him. There's nothing coy in the way he's stripping off, nothing teasing. He's not trying to provoke. But, Jesus, you can't look away. You look at his fingers as they rapidly unbutton, untie, unzip. You look at his skin as more and more of it is revealed. You look at the curve of his spine as he crouches to pick up his trousers and boxers off the floor where he's stepped out of them. You look at his eyes when he's put his clothes on the bar and turns his head to look at you. You don't say anything, and it's only then that he looks aware of his nakedness, and covers it with an aggressive "What?"

You go to the bar and move all your paperwork to the end of it, then you turn to him and take his face in your hands. "This is what," you say, and you kiss him, your thumbs pressing into his cheeks to force his jaws open and let your tongue in. He unbuttons your shirt and opens it, running his hands down your sides as his teeth graze your neck. You get hold of him firmly at his waist and lift him up – he's heavier than he used to be – and you sit him up on the bar. You look at your hands as you stroke from his knees slowly up his thighs; the covering of hair feels rough against your palms as you go against the grain of it. Your hands come to rest at his hips, and your thumbs feel into the creases at his groin. You hear his breath hitch, and you look up at his face and he grips the lapels of your jacket and leans down and kisses you. One of his feet pushes its way between your pelvis and the front of the bar, and rubs at your crotch.

You stand back from him a little. Very gently, with the knuckle of your index finger, you lift his cock and stroke underneath it as you might under the chin of a cat, back and forth, back and forth.

"So, what did you bring me for breakfast, Steven?" you ask him quietly as you stroke.

"Erm... It's a..."

"Is it a sandwich?"

"Yeah."

"You make it yourself?"

"Yeah." His cock is taking on a life of its own. His hands grip the edge of the bar.

"What's in it?" You stop stroking, and wrap your hand lightly around his growing erection.

"Bacon. Brendan – "

"Anything else?" You run your thumb over his tip. "Steven?"

"Um... Tomato and fuck!" You're easing back his foreskin.

"And?"

"And... mayo... That's..."

"Did you remember to put in some black pepper?" You're tightening your grip.

"Yeah."

"Good lad. I like black pepper. Sounds..." You bow your head and swipe the ooze of pre-cum with your tongue. "...Delicious."

You get down to it. The exposed head of his cock looks delicate and somehow new, and feels smooth on your lips when you kiss it, before you open your mouth and guide him into it, one hand massaging the root. Steven's panting now. You reach up with your free hand and feel for his open mouth and push in your fingers. His panting turns to stifled _Mmm_s as he holds you by the wrist and sucks. You're sucking too, and swallowing around him, and breathing hard through your nose as you feel him getting close. You manage to fight the reflex to pull away as his cum jets into your throat: you want it all safely in your mouth, not down the front of your suit.

He lets go of your wrist and you dry your wet fingers on his stomach. He's giggling breathily now, grinning at you, his chest and neck blotchily red, his cheeks flushed. You lift him down, and he staggers a bit as he lands, and clings around your neck and kisses you then pulls your collar out of the way and nuzzles against your shoulder. You hold him for a minute, then you open your eyes and notice that the top of the bar now bears an imprint of his bum.

"You need to wipe down the bar, Steven."

"You what?"

"Look."

"Oh yeah." He laughs. "Why me though, eh?"

"Cos I'm the boss."

"You're not the boss of me though, are you."

"My club, my rules. Clean the bar, Steven."

His eyes are shining; he plays the game. He tuts at you, and pads round behind the bar and gets out the cleaning stuff; he squirts some cleaner onto the surface and starts with the cloth, but you tell him, "Come this side and do it." He looks at you as if he thinks you're nuts, but he comes around anyway and does the job while you stand, head on one side, eating your sandwich and admiring his arse.

You inspect his work. "Missed a bit," you say, and he says, "No I haven't. Where?" and you say, "Yeah you did," and you put the remains of your sandwich down on the bar and lick your fingers, then give his backside a stinging slap. "Oi!" he says, and there's a scuffle and he lands a slap of his own. That's a first. "You little..." you say, and he darts away from you and you go after him. He'd be harder to catch if he wasn't laughing so much that he's slowing himself down, and you get hold of his arm and give him another slap on the bum, and wrap him in your arms before he can retaliate. He struggles a bit, then gives in.

"You gonna behave yourself now or..?"

"I was behaving myself," he says, mock-indignant.

"Oh yeah?" You kiss him. You loosen your grip on him but he stays pressed close to you. You kiss down his neck and then up to his ear, and you whisper, "I wanna fuck you." You take his hand and move it to your crotch so he can feel how much you mean it. "Upstairs, yeah?"

He gathers up his clothes and shoes, and follows you up the staircase. You think maybe you'll do it in the office, but you don't get that far. You're impatient now, and so is he, and the sofa is nearer. He unbuckles your belt, and he pushes your shirt and jacket off you. You push him onto the couch and get out of the rest of your clothes, then you have to find where he's thrown your suit jacket – it's on the floor and you say, "D'you know how much this cost me?" – and you get the condom out of the inside breast pocket. The sooner you get the all clear from those STI tests, the better, then you can forget about protection and... The thought excites you.

"Come on, Bren, I'm freezing." He might be cold but he's also getting hard again: men recharge quickly at his age. You hurry like he's asking you to, rip the packet open and put the condom on.

You're getting used to fucking in a bed, and this sofa is a step down, you've got no room for manouevre. Steven's helpful: "Hang on, if I shove up a bit, can you... is there room for you to, like, kneel sort of between..?" It's awkward, but you get there in the end with a bit of manhandling, and he ends up on his back with his shoulders propped against the arm of the couch. You're on top of him, and you kiss him, pulling his head back by his hair so you can run your tongue over his Adam's apple.

You spit into your hand and slick the spit onto your cock. He's got one leg along the back of the couch; the other foot is on the floor, and you hoist that leg up and rest the ankle on your shoulder so to give you access. You stretch him open quickly and push in, breathing with him, waiting when his muscles resist, plunging deeper when they relax. His eyes are closed, his dark lashes displayed. You're going to tell him to open his eyes but as you think it, he does it, and you can see as he looks at you that right now in this moment, you are his world just like he is yours. It scares you and it thrills you.

He's a noisy little bastard, crazy noises sometimes, and today as he's coming he's _Woo... ooh... ooh_ing like a ghost, and when you come too you laugh, you and him, clinging on to each other. You lick his warm sweat off your lips. You change positions so you're on your back and he's lying full length on top of you; you rub his back, and massage the satisfying pink marks you left on his backside when you slapped it.

When you get up, you go behind the bar and wrap the condom and bin it. He comes back there too as you're washing your hands in the sink, and he gives your arse an almighty slap, then collapses, laughing that stupid laugh of his that ought to be annoying but is the best sound in the world. Well, second best.

That slap stung.

"Anyone else, Steven," you say to him as he runs his hands under the tap too. "Anyone else did that to me, I'd – "

"Lucky you love me then, innit."

"Ain't it just." You dry yourself with a cloth, then hand it to him, and then you both start getting dressed. He picks up your watch to hand it to you, and when he sees the time he's shocked. "I only come over to bring you some breakfast," he says.

You're dressed, and so is he, after a fashion: his shirt's hanging open and his hair looks as if he's just been royally fucked. "Gotta go," he tells you, and he grabs your face and plants a kiss on your lips, then heads down the stairs. You hesitate for a second, then you follow him. He's unbolted the door, then gone back to where he left his jacket, and he picks it up and hangs it over his arm as he starts buttoning his shirt. You walk out ahead of him. "Come on if you're coming," you say, because you're going with him to his work, and you run over the road side by side.

He's getting on at you for making him miss the lunchtime rush as he unlocks the deli and you both go in, but you tell him it was worth it. You feel on top of the world. You smell of garlic though: it's just faint, but you can smell it where his hands gripped your lapels. You tell him so, ask him if he smells of it too, and he snaps at you like the stroppy little fuck that he is, "I work in a deli," and when he talks to you like that, Jesus, it goes straight to your pants. He's still buttoning his shirt, and you want to get to him before he gets all the way to the top. "I like garlic," you say as you advance on him. "In fact, it's making me hungry – " and he's shaking his head at you and smiling like he knows exactly what's in your head – "All over again."

And then your phone rings. Got to be kidding. You check it, and it's Cheryl. Fuck. You answer it, and she tells you she thinks your dad's gone missing; she's got herself all stressed out about it, and you reassure her, or try to. You remind her, Seamus used to do this, he'd go off to the pub or the racing and not show his face again for a week, but she won't listen, and you can't deal with her when she's like this and when you know what you know. "I don't know what to tell you," you say, "If he's gone, he's gone." She tells you you've got no heart, and hangs up on you. And now Steven's sniffing out that there's something going on. You saw him listening when you were on the phone with Cheryl, and now he's telling you it's a bit weird, your dad just disappearing. You look at him looking at you: when did he get so smart? The answer is, he always has been, you just didn't always give him the credit.

You look away from his eyes, because the way he sees so far into you is making you nervous. You walk behind the counter, past him into the back of the shop, and you feel him looking at you still.

You're saved by a handful of customers drifting in, but you know Steven's mind is working, and when you're on your own again he puts it to you that with your dad going AWOL, your good mood suddenly makes sense.

"You think my dad's disappearing act's got something to do with me, don't you?" you say to him.

"Right, swear down, you don't know anything about it." He's asking you straight out, no games, and he deserves an honest answer. But the honest answer is one that you can't let him hear, because then he'd be complicit and you can't have that; and anyhow you can't say the words, not to him, because he'd leave you, wouldn't he? Why wouldn't he?

You can't lie to him, though. So you answer a question he didn't ask: "I was with Cheryl all night, you know I was." You should have been a politician.

Joel comes through the door then, and this time you're glad to see him, or you would be if he didn't have guilt written all over his face. Steven asks him if he knows anything about where Seamus is, so you jump in quick before the panic in the kid's eyes makes him say something stupid. You ask him what he wants to talk about, and he says it's work stuff and it's private. Like that's not going to make Steven smell a rat. "If it's work stuff," you say to Joel, "Let's go to work." You touch Steven's arm as you go, and tell him, "See you later."

:::::::

The private work stuff Joel wants to talk about is getting his pay-off for the job he's done. You take him into the office and sit him down, and let him count out the money: one hundred and eighty-five thousand in cash. You've knocked fifteen grand off because Seamus's phone got smashed so Joel didn't send that text to Cheryl, and now she's on your case, and fifteen thousand barely compensates you for that – Joel's lucky to get what you're giving him. He doesn't see it that way. "Brendan, I killed your father for you," he says, but you tell him you're even now, and you can see that he gets that you're talking about how you dealt with his stepdad for him. He stops arguing, throws the last of the cash into his holdall; tells you he's going to sleep the night in the club because he can't face Cheryl, and then tomorrow he'll head off.

He looks tired out, burdened. He's just a kid, and what the fuck are you doing messing up a kid? You should have had the guts to do the thing yourself, but you didn't. You didn't.

You need to get out of this club and go home to comfort your sister, so this is the last time you'll ever see Joel, and you say to him, "Good luck." He gets up and heads for the door. And then, because you brought him into this kind of life, used him, corrupted him when you should have let him be better than you; and because he's done this thing for you that will, God willing, put twenty years of nightmares to rest – because of these things, you say, "Joel," and he pauses on his way out, and you say to him, "_Thank you_."

There's nothing more to be said between you. He nods his head, and goes, and you hope he understands that this was something that mattered.


	7. Chapter 7

You've had no sleep but still your head is filled with nightmares. As you lie in bed, the fears and the darkness crowd out the hopes you had for just one day, because he's back: Seamus is back from the dead. Yesterday, Cheryl was coming to terms and telling you that if your dad couldn't handle knowing you were gay, she was glad he was gone; yesterday, you were holding her in your arms and thinking this was the start of something better. Then in he walked, large as life. Battered and unsteady, but very much not dead.

You hate him. You feel diminished when he's near you, and you feel him behind you when he isn't. But somewhere inside you there's some other feeling, a feeling of relief that he didn't die. You hate him for what he did to you, for what he made you, for how he makes you feel and for the future he's putting beyond your reach; but he's your dad, and you remember when he made you feel _safe_. What does it make you, when you're relieved that the monster survives? You must be a monster too.

It's morning but it's early and it's still dark. You get out of bed and you go quietly upstairs. Cheryl's bedroom door is wide open, and she's not in there. She must be in with your dad, and the thought makes you shiver. She'll be cooing and soothing like she did last night, playing the nursemaid and watching over him.

You shower quickly then you go out, over the road to the club. Yesterday when you said goodbye to Joel, he said he'd be sleeping the night there so he wouldn't have to face Cheryl at the house, before hitting the road with his bag of blood money. Well now, you're curious. You're wondering if he knew then that he hadn't finished the job, so he'll have done a moonlight flit with his unearned fee. You're wondering if he's cleverer than you give him credit for, more sly, because you'd have sworn that the signs of trauma in him were the genuine signs of a man – a boy – who'd committed an act of murder and was haunted by it. But no, you find him in the club, asleep on the couch. He hasn't run away, so it looks like it was incompetence that allowed Seamus to live, not betrayal.

"Wake up. Joel. Wake up. Guess whose dad's back from the dead?" You see your words sink in behind his bleary eyes. "Yeah," you say, and you punch him in the face before he has time to get up. You pick up his holdall full of cash, and you unload it into the safe.

As you walk past him to go out, he tries to talk to you, "Brendan, I don't get it – " but you keep walking, because if you stop you'll hit him again.

"Don't bleed on the furniture," you tell him over your shoulder.

When you get home, Cheryl's in the kitchen. "Oh, Bren," she says, "You'll take over this, won't you? I've got to go out, get a few bits, and I've got to catch up with one of the girls, you know, to get some help with my assignment, which is a nightmare by the way... You won't go anywhere will you? I don't want him left on his own, okay?" And she's gone, and apparently you're making breakfast.

When your dad comes downstairs you ask him how he's feeling, and he says, "Lucky to be alive." He starts digging for something, says Cheryl's a saint, and you think he can smell guilt on you – he always could, ever since he first made you guilty when you were eight years old.

There's a knock on the door, and when you answer it, it's Steven, and he smiles and puckers up for a kiss but you say no. "What's wrong?" he says, and you let him look in past you and he sees Seamus. "You're back," he says, and it's kind of blown his theory that it was you that made Seamus disappear. He comes in, and you tell him what your dad told you and Cheryl, that he got mugged; and you all sit down, and Steven asks him about it. Steven is patently not faking his innocence in this thing, and Seamus must be able to tell that he had nothing to do with it, even if he suspects that you did, so you're glad that Steven came round. But as soon as you can, you get him to leave. You don't like the way your dad looks at him, and you don't like how your dad's presence makes you shrink from any accidental touch of your boyfriend.

:::::::

You've got to get out. You and your dad alone in the house, it just doesn't work, but he's asleep now on the sofa. Cheryl's been back but she's gone out again to get him some more painkillers, and you know she wants you to stay but you can't stand it. She'll be back soon, and you want to be gone by then so she can't guilt trip you into staying home any longer.

You look at him lying there. He looks harmless, til he wakes up and makes you jump. He tells you to help him up; you hesitate to take his hand, but you do it, and he sits up, and you know he didn't need your help. You get your jacket and put it on. "I gotta go to work," you say.

"Hey. All work and no play makes Brenda a dull girl. You still good at keeping secrets?" He stands up. He tells you what really happened, not the mugging story he told last night: he got knocked out, he woke up in a burning building, he got away. "You ask yourself the question," he says, "What did I do in my life to make somebody want to kill me?" He doesn't blink, but you hold your nerve, and he asks you to listen out for anyone who might know something. He's playing with you. "I reckon someone, someplace, is very nervous right now, because they know, pretty soon I'm going to be breathing down their neck. And that's something to keep a man awake at night, when they're so, so close."

You step towards him, into his space. "If I hear anything," you say. "Anything."

And then you get out of the house. You stop half way down the steps, and you gasp for breath. _Brenda... keeping secrets... breathing down their neck... awake at night... so, so close._ You feel as if you're going to be sick.

You need a drink.

:::::::

It's fucking cold, but you're sitting outside the Dog, because inside there's people, and outside you can breathe. The first whiskey burned as you gulped it down, but it warmed you, so. This second one you've barely touched yet. You're thinking. You don't know what to do, and you feel as if your control is slipping away. Cheryl is more determined now than ever that your dad will stay for good. You feel his weight bearing down on you, and you don't know how to be rid of it; you've got away with a fucked-up attempt on his life once, but you won't again, and even if you did, Steven would be on to you. The fact is, if you get rid of your dad, Steven won't want to know you, and if you don't get rid, Steven will see the coward that you are around him, and find out sooner or later what Seamus made you do. And either way he'll see that you're an imitation of the man he thought you were, a fake. And either way, you'll lose him, because why wouldn't he leave you?

You take a sip of your drink.

"This is where you're hiding." It's Steven. You glance at him then look away, ask if he wants a drink. He asks you if you've seen Joel, tells you the kid's face is a mess.

"I heard he walked into a door," you say. Steven will know it was you, no point thinking up a better explanation.

He sits down, and when he speaks his voice is quiet.

"I know what you did, Brendan, right. Don't think I'm stupid."

"I don't think you're stupid." You look at him now, and you can see him puzzling it out in his mind, and he's beautiful and you're going to lose him. He's got it right, almost. He thinks you got Joel to beat up your dad, then you did the same to Joel when he didn't do a good enough job of it. You don't tell him Joel wasn't just meant to batter Seamus but was meant to finish him off. You tell him, "You don't know anything." Then he starts talking about his stepdad, saying he wanted to put him in hospital sometimes too, like he's trying to find a way to make what you did less monstrous than it was. But he's better than you, Steven is, and you tell him what the difference is. The difference is that it was his _step_dad. None of his genes come from that man. You're raising your voice now: "There's a consolation, and that consolation is that whatever makes _him_ tick doesn't necessarily make _you_ tick. There's a difference. Okay? You're wired different."

"Yeah well you know what, you're not him."

You're a watered-down version, you tell him, "Seamus Brady Mark Two. It's pathetic. It's..."

You're pathetic. You've run out of steam, and you want Steven to do something, say something, put you out of your misery. After a moment, he says, "You promised me that you'd change."

"So run away. Just..." You've given him a get-out. Better you find out now.

"No. I'm not going anywhere." He's not giving up on you. He sounds as if he means it, and you feel a shock of emotion. "Right, but you've got to swear to me that this – nothing like this ever happens again. Right, and I'm serious. If me, Lucas or Leah mean anything to you, right, anything at all, then this ends now."

"Course you mean something, Steven. You and the kids, you're..." You can hear a tremble in your voice, so you take a mouthful of your drink. The tremble is in your hand too.

"Brendan, right, I love you, and that's not gonna change, but you've got to promise, and you've got to mean it."

You look at him. He's leaning forwards in his seat, and you can see that he knows there are things he's missing, that you're not telling him. He looks serious, and he looks afraid. Is he scared of losing you, too?

"I give you my word."

All he says is, "Good," but the anxiety that etched his face a moment ago is smoothed away, and all you want is to live up to your promise so that he doesn't worry any more. He smiles at you. "Can I have a bit of that, then?"

You slide your glass towards him.

"Didn't think you liked the hard stuff," you say.

"Yeah, well, you try being your boyfriend. Driving me to drink, innt it." He takes a sip and makes a face, then hands it back to you and you finish it. "D'you like it, by the way?"

"Hm?"

"Not the whiskey, I know you like that, don't I. This." He takes hold of his collar, and you register for the first time that he's wearing a tracksuit, and you realise you haven't seen him in one for months.

"That new?"

"Yeah. Got the bus into town after work last night, didn't I, went round the sales, you know, with that money you gave me."

"Oh yeah?"

"Yeah. I took the kids, right, got them loads of stuff too," he says, as if he thinks you'll be mad at him for spending some of it on himself instead of them.

"So," you say. "_Trackies_."

"Yeah, I got this one, and another two." He pauses. "What d'you think?"

What do you think? You think he looks like the boy you fell in love with, only stronger, and deeper. You think he looks like himself, after all those months when he seemed to get further away from you and to change into someone else's version of him.

You stand up, and pull him to his feet, and you kiss him, and you don't give a fuck if anyone sees.

:::::::

Loyalty means nothing. Not to some people, anyways.

Yesterday, Joel came at you, getting on at you about the money he reckons you owe him for his half of the club. With your promise to Steven ringing in your ears, you resisted the temptation – and you were sorely tempted – to kick the shit out of him. He got off lightly: that should have been enough for him, he should have understood that you owe him nothing. But he's understood nothing, because today, he tries something else.

Lucky for you, and less lucky for Joel, Bart McQueen is an idiot. You smell the weed on him when he stops you outside the club on your way back from a meeting, and when he asks you if you've got any jobs going, you ought to smell a rat because nobody would go to a potential employer reeking of what he's been smoking, unless they're spectacularly stupid. That's why you don't smell the proverbial rat: because Bartholomew _is_ spectacularly stupid, stupid enough to do that. It's only when you see the broken lock on the door of Chez Chez that you realise he was trying, in his own special way, to stall you.

You get a hold of him by the scruff of his scruffy neck, and you take him inside.

Joel's upstairs, and he's not hard to creep up on; he's making so much noise smashing up your bar that you and Bart are right behind him before he knows it. He's got a bag full of your money.

You get rid of Bart. It's easy with him, you just tell him to get out of town and never come back. He's scared enough that you know he'll do as you say. He runs. He's nothing to you.

Joel is different. Joel stands his ground, you know that. Joel knows too much about you, but he's up to his neck in so much of the same shit as you are, that you know his disloyalty won't involve going to the law. His disloyalty involves trying to steal from you, and you're surprised how much it hurts you, knowing that he would do this after the things you've been through together. And you're going to hurt him back, because that's what you do.

He's still on about the money, reckons it's his by right. It reminds you of his dad, and you tell him so because you know it will cut him to hear that. Always about the money, Warren was: he knew the price of everything and the value of nothing, as the wise Irishman said.

You ask Joel, can he remember any time he didn't screw up? You're taking off your jacket and you're rolling up your sleeves. He goes on the attack then, the kid does. Quietly though, a nice attempt at menace which would probably work on most people. Not on you though, because you're the man he learnt it from; you ought to be proud. He says, "If you wanted Seamus dead, why didn't you do it yourself?" Identify your opponent's weak spot: another thing he's learnt from you. "All that stuff you said about power," he goes on, "About if someone takes it from you, you take it back at any cost?"

"Stop."

"He's just an old man, Brendan." Joel walks towards you, right up close. "So what's got you so scared?"

"I said stop." What the fuck does he know? Has Seamus said something, or is the kid just taking a guess?

"Seems to me like you have some serious daddy issues," he says.

He folds in half and crumples to the floor when your fist hammers into his stomach.

You're going to break him, and it won't be your fault, it'll be his, because he's asked for it by not getting out when he had the chance. When someone's going to damage you and you're not strong enough to fight back, then you run and if you don't – if you stay and let it happen – you deserve what's coming to you.

You look for a weapon: you pick up a bar stool, assess its weight; stand over Joel with it in your hands. He challenges you, "Go on then. Do it. Go on," and you raise it above your head, and you hear yourself scream as you smash it on the floor beside Joel. _Beside_ him. It takes you a moment to work out what just happened, and why, and then you realise that you can't be the man you once were, a man who could look at a broken boy and break him some more: because you have given your word.

You stand and watch as Joel gets himself across to the couch and sits up, leaning on it; then you pour yourself a drink.

"I gave my word, no more violence," you say, and you're explaining it to yourself as much as to the kid. "No more hurting. It ends. I know that... that if I ever go back there... everything I ever fought for..." You look around in time to see Joel reaching for a piece of the broken stool; you cross to him and put your foot on it. He looks up at you, and you tell him you need him to go now, and he gets to his feet. "Don't ever come back here again. Cos if you do, you'll make me break that promise."

He doesn't say a word. He knows he's lost, and he goes, and you sit down again with your whiskey. You're going to have to figure out who you are.

:::::::

You've called in the security company to repair the safe door, which Joel had smashed to make it look like a burglary. While you're waiting you clean up the bar yourself, sweep up all the broken glasses and bottles, get rid of the twisted remains of the bar stool; you don't want to have to look at the evidence of how close you came to letting Steven down again, for any longer than you have to.

You get a text message from an unknown number. You read the message once, and then you read it again. It's from the sexual health clinic where you got screened last month, and the message says that every test came back negative. It's only now, feeling a wave of relief, that you realise that you must have been worried about it.

As soon as a couple of the bar staff arrive, you go out and cross the road to the deli.

It's an hour or so before closing. Steven's kids are there; Leah's in her school uniform, and they're both sitting by the window, drawing.

"Hiya," Steven says.

"They okay?" you ask.

"Yeah. One of the mums picked them up for me."

"Oh, yeah, course."

A customer wants serving, so you leave Steven to it and go and sit down with the kids.

"Look," Leah says. She folds her piece of paper in half and hands it to you. There's a picture of an animal on the front – a dog, possibly – and you open it like a card and on the inside it says, _HAPY BIRTHDAY._

"That's cute, yeah. Somebody's birthday is it?"

"Daddy's."

Fuck.

"When? Today?"

"Yep. We're taking a cake home."

"Chocolate," Lucas adds.

"Yeah?" You think for a moment, then you say to the kids, "See you later," and you go back to the club. You get the folder of ex-employee records out of the filing cabinet and flick through them to find the one marked _Hay, Steven_, and Leah was right, there it is in black and white: _DOB: 9/1/90. _

Fuck. Fuck, you're a useless idiot, and fuck, he was born in the _nineties_? Sometimes you forget how young he is.

You leave again, and go home but you don't go in. Instead, you bang on the next door along, and you keep knocking until you hear, "Alright, give me a chance – " and the little blonde girl, Leanne, opens the door. "Oh," she says. "What can I do you for?"

"Babysitting," you say. "Tonight, okay?"

"You haven't got a baby," she says.

"Leah and Lucas." You know she knows them and they know her, she's looked after them before.

"Well it's a bit short notice."

"Got other plans, have you?" You look her up and down; she's wearing pyjamas, and probably has been all day.

She sees your point.

"How much?" she asks.

"Fifty."

"You're joking aren't you?"

"Eighty."

"A hundred, and you pay for a taxi for me to get home."

"Seriously?"

"That's my final offer I'm afraid." She sticks out her bottom lip.

Jesus. What is it with these fearless little blondes?

"Okay. Be there at eight."

You can't wait to leave the girl and get back to the boy. You head straight back to the deli. Steven is putting things away in the fridge ready to close up. He looks up and sees you come in.

"Where did you vanish off to?" he asks.

You walk round the back of the counter, take his face in your hands and kiss him.

"Happy birthday."

"How did you know?"

"Little bird told me." You nod your head towards Leah. "You shoulda told me though, Steven."

"Yeah, but it's just another day though, innit."

"I'm picking you up at eight. What d'you wanna do?"

"What, like, a date?"

"If that's what you wanna call it."

He grins, then looks serious, and says, "I'll never get a babysitter, not at this short notice."

"Babysitter's booked. Leanne. So, what d'you fancy? Pictures?" You grit your teeth: "Clubbing?"

He laughs at that.

"I'm not gonna put you through that, am I? Can we... can we just go out for, like, dinner?"

"If that's what you want. I'll book somewhere in town." You kiss him again. "Eight o'clock."

:::::::

You go round to his place in a taxi, with Leanne – that way, you know she won't be late.

Steven lets you in. He's already got his coat on, it's the one he wore when he came to find you in Dublin. He gives Leanne a few instructions; the kids are ready for bed so she shouldn't have any trouble, and your hundred quid will pay for her to sit and watch Steven's telly and eat Steven's food, and more than likely doze off on Steven's sofa. It's a price worth paying.

In the taxi, it occurs to you that you don't even know if he likes Indian food, but he says he does: "I love a takeaway, me." The place you've booked isn't the takeaway kind of joint. When you go in, there's music playing softly. The waiters are in cream tunics; the table cloths are starched white linen, and candles burn on the tables. There are couples dining, and one or two groups of four, but no gangs of lairy lads: it's not that sort of place.

You've got a corner table. Steven takes off his jacket and hangs it over the back of his chair. He's in a dark blue shirt, skinny as fuck, and he looks freshly shaved and smells freshly showered. His eyes shine in the candle light, their pupils huge and black.

When the waiter brings the drinks list, you tell Steven he can have whatever he wants. Champagne, anything. He wants beer, and that's fine, and that's what you have too.

The menu baffles him. He studies it for a while, frowning, and then he asks you what you're having. "Let's share," you say, and when the waiter comes you order a selection, running each dish past Steven to let him say yes or no. You see him relax then, and more so once he's got some drink inside him. The sharp little angles of his face soften, and you can see that he's enjoying himself, and you're relieved because you'd worried when you first got here that the formality of the restaurant would make him uncomfortable. The fact is, there's no place in the land that's he's not good enough for.

The food is good. He's almost keeping pace with you, it's that good. The company's good, too. You make each other laugh, and today's events with Joel seem a world away.

The plates and dishes are cleared, and the waiter brings the dessert menu. You don't want anything, and Steven decides against, too. You're glad about that; you think if he eats much more, all he'll want to do is sleep. You ask for a black coffee. Steven says, "Can I have a cup of tea, please?" You smile at the way he gets all nicely-spoken when he talks to the waiter.

You pull your phone out of your pocket and open the message from the clinic. How do you bring this subject up? You've left it til you've got enough drink inside you, because it's... awkward.

"Here," you say, and you hand him the phone.

He looks at the message for a long while, and he looks uncomprehending.

"I don't..?" He hands you back the phone.

"I went to a clinic," you say, "To get tested – "

"Are you ill?" His eyes are wide, his mouth open.

"No! No, Steven, I... It was a check-up, okay?" You drop your voice. "It was a... a sexual health clinic, you know? I just wanted to... to make sure I ain't got anything, you know, anything like – "

"What, Aids and that?"

"Yeah, that and, you know, anything else, so... And I ain't. See, read the message. The results." You put the phone on the table in front of him, and he reads it again, understanding it this time. "All clear, see."

"What did you go for, Brendan?"

"I just... I wanted to make sure, just... so we can stop, you know..." You wait for the penny to drop. It doesn't. "So we don't have to use..." Nope, still nothing. "So we can stop using _protection_."

"Oh!" He actually blushes. Then he has a think, and he says, _sotto voce_, "What about me though? Don't I need to get tested too if we're gonna..?"

Strictly speaking, he's right, but you're willing to chance it. You're desperate to chance it, for fucksake.

"Why, you been careless, have you?" you ask. You're frightened to know his answer.

He tuts at you, "No, course not."

"Never?"

"No. Well, not since, you know, Rae."

Okay. This is good.

"So... _Noah_ didn't..?"

"No. He would of, if I'd let him, but – "

Jesus.

"And with Douglas?" You try to keep the sneer out of your voice when you say the name.

"Brendan!" Your silence forces him to continue. "Doug likes... _liked_ it nice and..." He pauses again, but you don't help him out. "You know... not, like, dirty."

It takes every atom of self control you possess not to laugh. The waiter saves you by bringing the coffee and tea.

"And what about with anyone else?" you ask, and you concentrate on your coffee, fiercely stirring it.

"There wasn't anyone else, I didn't... I'm not you, Brendan."

Ouch. But that's good. You've never asked him about it, but in those months after that last time with you and before he got with Douglas, you used to imagine all kinds.

"Okay."

"I mean, not everyone goes around picking blokes up, do they?" He's getting feisty now. "It's alright, innit, you asking me all about my past, but what about your past, Brendan, eh? What about all them – "

"I been at it for longer than you, Steven, course there's gonna be more..." You take a breath. You're not going to let this turn into an argument. "But it's you now. Just you."

He's holding his cup and sipping out of it, so you can't see his mouth, but his eyes are smiling now as he looks at you over the rim. He puts it down.

"A _lot_ longer," he says. "Cos I'm twenty-three, me, and you're – "

"Yeah, alright." You know how old you were when he was born; you know what was already happening to you. The thought rises up and you battle to repress it.

"Bren? I was only messing, right." He leans forward and you drag your gaze up from your coffee cup to his eyes. "You're not _that_ old."

He's smiling his most impudent smile. He's gorgeous, flawless in the flickering candlelight.

"Wait til I get you home," you say, "You cheeky bastard."

:::::::

You kiss in the back of the taxi, then when you see the disapproval in the driver's eyes as he glances at you in his rear view mirror, you kiss again. Steven's mouth tastes of lager and spices.

You tell the cab driver to wait outside the flats, and you go in and while Steven goes to check on the kids, you pay Leanne and escort her out to the taxi, and hand over enough money for your fare and to get the girl home.

He's in the bathroom when you go back in. You go straight to his bedroom and switch on the bedside lamp. You hang your suit jacket on the back of the door; sit on the bed and take off your shoes; get the lube from the top of the wardrobe, but leave the condoms up there.

He comes into the room.

"Kids are asleep, but..." he says, and moves the chair against the door. "Just in case."

He comes to you, and you go to him. He feels slight in your arms: even though he's bigger than he used to be, it's relative, and the thin cotton of his shirt adds no bulk as it fits him like a skin. He's shorter, too, now he's taken off his trainers. His lips are at the base of your throat.

You tilt his chin up and look at his face for a moment; he looks into your eyes, and then at your mouth, and then you're kissing. His hands are clasping the back of your head, and he's biting at your tongue, and you grab his backside with both hands and lift him up and turn around with him, and fall with him onto the bed.

Two buttons come off his shirt as you get it off him; maybe three. "Easy, tiger," he says, and he's being jokey, you think, but he's right – you can slow down because you've got all the time in the world. You kiss his stomach.

You're both naked now, lying face to face on top of the cover. As you kiss, he runs his hand over the muscles of your arm. Then he says, "Get off a minute, I wanna get in," so you move and he pulls the cover back and you get in and he pulls it over both of you, and then you pick up where you left off. You could do this for ever, lying here kissing and stroking, being kissed and being stroked, except your balls are aching with needing him. He reads your mind, and rolls onto his back; you reach for the lube and prop yourself on one elbow, and watch his face as you slide your hand between his open legs. He breathes in sharply. "Cold, is it?" you ask, and you warm it up and warm him up as you massage it onto him and into him.

He's ready now, and you smear more lube onto your cock, and then he opens his arms and you climb on top of him.

When the tip of your cock nudges against his rim you feel him spasm closed, but then he relaxes, and you widen him with your fingers and guide yourself in.

You've gone bareback before, a few times in your life – before you got paranoid about taking some disease home to your wife, and once or twice after – but it was never like this. Before, you always heard a clock ticking or felt the Devil at your back. Now, all there is, in your head and setting alight all your senses, is Steven.

You lift his leg with your hand at the back of his thigh, and you push his knee hard against his chest, and the stretch lets you press deeper into his body, as deep as you can get. His ring feels hard around the root of you. The inside of him feels vividly alive, silkily surrounding you; your cock feels ultra-sensitive, the sensation of his body around it startlingly raw. With no barrier, you don't know where you end and he begins. _Unprotected_ is right: your defences are gone, and you're lost in him.

You let go of his leg and you raise yourself up on your arms so there's space between your bodies for him to take his cock in his hand. His other hand he places flat against your chest, and you feel your heart thudding against his palm as you thrust faster and faster into him. His cries are open-mouthed and abandoned, and they drown out the sounds you make.

He comes and then you do. He looks startled as you empty yourself shudderingly into him, and then he says, "Oh, fuck, Brendan," and you slide out of him and collapse onto him, and kiss him, and you feel him smiling into your mouth.

You settle beside him, his head on your shoulder, as your breathing and your hearts return to normal. "Thanks for taking me out," he says, and then, "You smell of curry."

"You taste of it," you say, and you kiss him. "Happy birthday, Steven."

You're both sticky with his cum, and he's full of yours. He starts to get out of bed to go and clean himself up, but you don't let him. You don't let him out of your arms, and soon, he falls asleep.


	8. Chapter 8

You spend almost every night here now, in this bed, with him. Once or twice when you've not got out of work until the early hours of the morning, you've gone home instead, but that word, _home,_ stopped fitting that place when your dad moved in, and you barely visit it now except to get a change of clothes and to pick up your post. Joel's gone, so you don't have that worry any more that you ought to be there to remind him not to shoot his mouth off in front of Seamus; nor do you need to be there to protect him from Seamus. Not that you think, rationally, that Joel was in danger from the old man: it was just a _What if..?_ that nagged at you.

You're growing accustomed to waking up with Steven, and sometimes, you're woken up _by_ him. It's accidental some of those times – he gets out of bed as quietly as he can to get his children up, but you wake up anyway, because you feel his warmth leave you, and then you watch him as he pulls on some clothes and combs his hair with his fingers. Other times, it's on purpose, when he wakes in the night feeling horny. He'll say your name, or stroke your chest, or you'll feel his lips on your shoulder, and then his teeth if you don't respond, and it's pitch dark and you fold yourself around him and let him work you up til you're ready to fuck him in the lazy warmth of near-sleep. He likes it in the mornings too, your mouth seeing off his wake-up erection, and then long kisses tasting of his cum as he returns the favour with a handjob that, when he's not long been awake, doesn't have his usual dexterity: it's clumsy and rough, and makes your toes curl.

Other times, you wake up and it's just that he's making himself more comfortable, cuddling up against your side; and seeing as you're both awake you might as well kiss for a bit, and then you listen to his breaths deepening again and you feel his head weighing on your shoulder as he falls back asleep.

Your life is changing.

You had a visit from the police at the club. The Savage boy, William – the lad who's meant to be the brainy one but manages to be the biggest fool of the lot of them – somehow fell down the steps outside the club, so a couple of officers came to see you a day or two later in the course of their investigation, and for once, you had nothing to hide. They could sniff around as much as they wanted, and you were almost disappointed when they didn't want to search the place. You're legit now. You still get the odd call from a contact chasing some business, but you tell them you're out of the game now, and you know that soon the calls will dry up altogether. Maybe the tax man doesn't get his cut of the income from some of your _investments_, but that's about all. It's a big shift, but you want to do right by Steven and the kids. You have to.

The pretence to the kids that you don't stay the night has gone by the board. Leah's seen you coming out of her daddy's bedroom in the mornings, and she's not stupid. You haven't figured out where you stand with her yet – neither has she – and it's a while since you've had to deal with your own small children, let alone someone else's. You have your moments, when they ask for a bedtime story or something, but it feels as if they view you as an entertaining visitor and not someone who's side by side with their dad. That's okay though, you guess, because the poor mites have had enough disruption in their lives lately, and you're not a great bet as a father anyhow. It's making you think about Declan and Padraig though, and you're talking to them more now. Eileen's calmed down a bit since Christmas, Cheryl's had a word with her and she's accepted that you've a right to have contact with your sons. It's baby steps, and you don't know when she'll let you see them, but it's better than it was.

One weekend, Amy's dad has Leah and Lucas to stay with him in Manchester, and you and Steven go on another _date_. You let him choose where to go, and you kind of hope he's going to want to eat out again like you did on his birthday, but he wants to go to a club in town and you agree, even though you spend your working life in a fucking club, and you know it'll be full of kids Steven's age and you'll feel like you're everyone's dad. And you're late meeting him there because you get held up by staffing problems at Chez Chez, and you're on edge by the time you get to the venue and you're sure he'll be pissed off with you too, and when you eventually find each other, you've both gone off the idea. You give it up and get a taxi back to the village, and you can feel his disappointment; so you stop the cab as you're passing the Dog, and you go in there, you and Steven. And what you do is the most ordinary thing in the world: you have a few drinks in your local. Only, it's not ordinary for you. It's extraordinary, this life you've found yourself building, in which you and your boyfriend are out together, and _out_ together, and anyone might see you and know that you're a couple. Darren Osborne has a joke with you; Jack seems pleased for you. And that night you take Steven back to your place, because Cheryl and Seamus have gone away for a couple of days to help him get over his mugging. And you and Steven make love in the bedroom in which he first spent a night with you more than two years ago. Back then, you thought that the novelty of exploring and igniting a new body was the biggest rush you could feel; now, the familiarity of your lover thrills you in ways you never imagined.

:::::::

Steven is a working man whose days are more circumscribed than yours, by his shop's opening hours and by his children's school routine.

Today you're up for the morning rush – more often you stay in bed until long after he and the kids have left the house – and you're a bystander as he organises the chaos and gets Leah and Lucas ready, and gets himself dressed for work. You loathe the deli uniform, mainly for its associations: it's far more Douglas than Steven, styled for the privileged middle classes that the Yank used to want to escape from. It's _preppy_, and Steven isn't, although when he bends over, his arse looks fine even in those fucking chinos, and when the sleeves of his blue shirt are rolled up, his forearms, sinewy and brown, invite you to grasp them. So, not all bad.

He gets a phone call saying the school's closed for the day because of a burst pipe or something. The kids are happy at that news, but Steven isn't, he's single-handed at the deli so he says he can't take them in to work with him. You know what he's thinking and you say no. The idea's ridiculous. But he says he's desperate, and the kids look at you like butter wouldn't melt, and you think, what's the worst that could happen? So you agree to stay and look after them, and Steven rewards you with a kiss before he goes.

Apart from a cushion lobbed at your face, it goes well at first. Leah goes and changes out of her school uniform, and then they both sit on the floor and do some drawing. It's peaceful. You reckon you ought to engage with them a bit, but the conversation doesn't go so well, and you leave them to it and settle on a chair for some shut-eye. When you wake up, the place is a tip, and the two of them start running around, and you catch sight of yourself in the mirror and they've thrown paint on your face while you slept, and you ask who did it and they start yelling like they've got no respect because you're no one to them, and you yell back at them, "Quiet!" And they're stunned, and so are you.

You wash your face in the bathroom, and you hold onto the basin for a minute. You can do this. You fucked up big time with your own kids, but you can't do that with Steven's. They're babies, for fucksake, and he's trusted you with them without hesitating, and what did you do? You screamed at them. Jesus. You wonder if they'll grass you up to him, and then what? If it came to a choice, he'd choose them over you, no doubt about it. You've got to fix this, and also, you've got to get the flat cleaned up or he'll think you can't cope

They're sat on the sofa when you go back in. You're rusty on this childcare schtick, but you reckon bribery might work: just because they're kids, it doesn't mean they're not human. A tenner, it costs you in the end to get them to help tidy up the mess. A tenner and an apology for shouting, which wins their grudging forgiveness, although Leah drives a hard bargain and decides that the rest of the day will be spent cooking. Okay.

She gets out a recipe book once the clearing up has been done, and everything she wants to cook looks challenging, so you flick through and find the thing with the shortest list of ingredients. "Here," you say, "Why don't we make this for your daddy, yeah?"

Turns out, making a cake is easy – it's a hundred grammes of this and a hundred grammes of that and a couple of eggs – who knew? The hard bit is what comes when you're waiting for it to cook and then to cool down, because that's when they decide they want you to sing. "I don't sing," you tell them, but that won't wash, and you've got to sing with them because Daddy sings with them, apparently. And it's all Daddy's favourite songs, among which Johnny Cash doesn't figure.

Leah's still singing when they're decorating the cake. Lucas has given up by then, but Leah's not giving up on you, and she's asking you for maybe the twentieth time to sing _I Kissed a Girl. _Do five-year-olds do irony? You wouldn't put it past her, she's a smart one. Anyhow, she gets her own way just like her dad does, and when she looks up at you like she thinks maybe you're not so bad after all, and she joins in with the song, you realise that you're actually enjoying this day.

You shut up when the door opens and Steven walks in. He asks you if you were singing Katy Perry, and you deny it but Leah says you were, and Steven is highly amused.

"Surprise," Leah says, and she shows Steven the cake.

"Is that for me? Aah, whose idea was that?"

"Daddy Brendan," Leah says.

Steven looks at you. He looks amazed, and you think maybe he looks proud. "Daddy Brendan?" he says.

"D'you hear that?" you say to him. "_Daddy_. You ain't getting rid of me now, are you."

You kiss him lightly, and you begin to think that maybe you stand a chance of doing this thing right.

:::::::

You've read the kids a story, and between you, you and Steven have put them to bed. You carried Leah because she'd drifted off by the end of the story.

One of the perks of having Steven as your boy is that there's usually food in the fridge that he's brought home from the deli, and tonight he says you're having _pasta e fagioli._

"Okay," you say. "What's that then?"

"It's like, soup."

"What kinda soup?"

"It's got pasta and beans, and – "

"_Vegetarian_?"

He puts on his I'm-talking-to-a-child voice.

"It _was_ vegetarian, right, but seeing as how you've been looking after me kids all day, I'll put some pancetta in it for you, alright?" In his accent, _pancetta _sounds as if it comes from Manchester.

"Alright," you say, and as he goes into the kitchen to sort it out he throws you a smile that makes your heart skip a beat.

:::::::

You're in bed before he is. You're sitting up and reading, but if you're honest with yourself, your eyes are straining: the kids' story books are one thing, their print is bigger, but the book you're trying to read is another matter. Do you need to get an eye test? Jesus. Or maybe it's that the light from the bedside lamp is too dim. Yes, must be the light.

When Steven comes into the room you put the book down, because you don't want him catching you squinting, and thinking he's lumbered himself with an old crock – he's already started making cracks about you getting middle age spread. You don't think he means it, but you don't want to give him more reasons than he's already got to think that he can do better than being with you. You wonder if these fears are going to get worse as the years go by, or will there come a point when you'll relax and actually believe that he's with you because it's you he wants?

You make yourself stop trying to second guess the future, and pull your focus back to him.

He's just wearing a towel.

He stands at the foot of the bed for a moment, and then he kneels on it and stalks towards you on all fours on top of the cover, and plants his hands and knees either side of you, and the towel falls open so it's just draped over his arse.

"So," he says, and he looks sexy as fuck and you can feel your cock pressing up against the weight of the cover. "_Daddy Brendan_." He gives you a kiss. "I'm dead proud of you."

"Yeah?" You feel as if you've passed a test.

"Yeah." He kisses you again, and this time you take his face in your hands, and the kiss deepens.

"Get a reward, do I?" you ask.

"Said I owed you, didn't I?" he says. He kisses you just above the neck of your T-shirt, then he jumps off the bed and he starts to go and fetch the lube, but you swing out of bed too and you grab the towel as it falls onto the floor and you swipe him on the backside with it, and he turns to you in mock outrage, "Oi, Brendan!"

You sit down on the bed.

"Come here," you tell him, and he does as he's told. You pull him onto your lap and he winds his arms around you and you kiss again. You stroke his thigh, and feel your erection growing underneath him as he moves. You can feel him bunching the fabric of your T-shirt in his hands as he paws at your back, but he doesn't take it off you, and then he's just got one arm wrapped around you, because his other hand has gone to his cock and he's jerking himself off as he kisses you. His breaths hit fast and cold in the back of your throat in rhythm with his hand pumping his dick, and he's moving on your lap just to make you crazy for him. Then when he's almost there he gets up off you, stands and faces you like he's the most confident man in the world, and comes into his hands.

His hands go behind his back then, and he's lubing himself up with his cum, and you watch his belly heave in and out as he does it. And he's smiling at you. Jesus. Then he delves into your boxers and frees your cock, and he turns around and starts lowering himself onto you. You assert yourself then, you take hold of his hips and pull him down fast, and he lets out a sort of yelp as you slip through the slick of his semen, up into his body. He leans his head back onto your shoulder, and he says, "Bastard," and you hold him by his hair and kiss him, and then he starts to grind.

Your orgasm is vivid and disorientating. You hold him there when you're finished, your arms around his stomach, not just because you don't want to be out of him but because you can feel the world spinning and he's all you've got to anchor you.

:::::::

You slept on the sofa. The term _slept_ is inaccurate, though, because the fact is that you barely slept at all, because you've fucked up again.

You saw Seamus yesterday, twice, and that was why you fucked up. Not an excuse – you've broken your promise to Steven again, _no more violence_, and you've only got yourself to blame because you're a grown man, for chrissake, and what kind of a man lets his dad get so deep under his skin? – but he was what set you off, you can see that now. You've been thinking about it all fucking night.

Everything was okay yesterday morning, never been better. You remember a moment when you and Steven caught each other's eyes as you nicked a biscuit in the kitchen, and you winked at him, and it was nothing, just a moment in time, but it was everything. It felt like it was normal. Then you had to go back to Cheryl's – home, you should call it – and when you walked in the door, Seamus was there, sat on the sofa staring at an old photograph. You didn't want to speak to him but he made you: he told you it would have been your Nana Flo's birthday.

"She did so much for me," he said, "For you kids..." and you know what she did for him. She protected him. And what she did for you was, she turned her back while her son tortured you, for years, and then she let you put her out of her misery. "She loved you kids," Seamus said, and he _hugged_ you, and you shrank at his touch but you couldn't stop him – still couldn't, after all these years. He wanted you and Cheryl to go for a drink with him later. "Let's toast the old girl," he said, but you said no to that. The dead can stay dead.

Second time you saw Seamus yesterday, you were out with Leah. She'd got this school project, building a _bug motel._ Bugs, not your favourite things, but Steven asked you, and Leah asked you, and you figured it goes with the territory. So you started out digging in the patch of garden outside their place, and then you broadened your search: well, Steven was looking at you, kind of proud, and Leah was getting along with you as if she'd always been yours, so you let Steven get on with whatever he needed to get on with, and you took Leah into the village.

You lost her. Only for a minute – less – but still, you took your eyes off her when bloody Leanne distracted you, and Leah wandered off. You shouted for her and she came back, no problem, but she had this big stick to put in the tank for the bugs and she said some man had given it to her, and you know what happens if a certain kind of man gets hold of a child, and it would have been your fault.

You wanted to take her home then, but she overruled you, so you walked down to the river. She held your hand and talked all the way, just like her dad. The talking part, anyhow.

By the river, that was where you saw Seamus. He saw you first, came over, called Leah your _crony_. Insinuated. Asked you again to go to the pub with him and Chez, and again you said no. You could tell from the feel of Leah's hand in yours that she didn't much like him: maybe she was picking up on it from you, or maybe her instincts were good.

He crouched down to talk to her. "That's a nice Wendy house you have there. Maybe if you're good, Brenda'll let you play with it."

"Brenda's a girl's name," she said.

Seamus looked at you like he was making sure your humiliation had sunk in. He smiled, clapped you on the shoulder, and walked away.

You wanted to get Leah home after that. You started to pick up the bug motel, only some flat-footed idiot came along and kicked it out of your hands, broke it into pieces. It was an accident, you know that now and you knew it then, but that didn't stop you laying into him, Liam, that meathead lad that works sometimes at the club. He said sorry straight off, but that didn't stop you either.

The thought of Steven stopped you. _This ends now._ It should have ended before you stamped on Liam's foot and grabbed him by the lapels and told him to watch where he was going, but at least it ended before you punched him into the river. And then you looked around, and Leah was gone again, and then you saw her, and you saw Douglas.

He was holding her in his arms, and she was clinging on to him, and you heard him say, "Don't cry. Daddy Doug's here."

You didn't say a word to him. You walked up to them and you said, "Come on, Leah, let's get you home, yeah?" Douglas put her down and she came with you, thank God, and you told her, "I wasn't angry with you. You know that, right?" You salvaged what you could of her school project, and you took her home. "We're not gonna tell your daddy that Douglas is back, okay, just for now," you said to her on the way. Because you'd already lost her twice, and lost your temper in front of her, so you might as well ask her to lie for you, just so there wasn't a rule left in the good parenting handbook that you hadn't broken.

Soon as you got her back home, you told Steven you had to get to work, and you left.

You would have gone home to Cheryl's after you finished at the club, but you'd made a promise to Leah so you went back to Steven's instead. It was the early hours by the time you let yourself in.

You slept on the sofa.

You get up early, and by the time Steven's up and getting the kids ready for school, you're outside fixing up the bug motel til it's good as new. You go in and present it to her, and she's happy with it, and you've kept your side of the bargain so you hope she'll keep her side, which is to keep quiet about Daddy Doug.

Steven asks you what time you came to bed. Thought you had come to bed while he was sleeping, did he? Maybe that's why he didn't come looking for you. You tell him you didn't go to bed, because you weren't tired. You don't tell him that you don't deserve to share his bed, that his confidence in putting his children in your care is misplaced, that the changes in you are fragile. And you don't tell him that his husband is back in town, but his daughter does: "Is Daddy Doug taking me to school?" Steven says he's long gone, but she says different, and she lands you right in it.

Your boyfriend is not impressed. You're saved, for now, because it's time for them to leave for school; and you're tempted to swerve him for the rest of the day too, because how can you tell him that just knowing that Douglas is back is filling you with the fear that if you push your luck an inch too far, Steven will realise what a mistake he made when he chose you. But you're out on the balcony at Chez Chez and you look across at his deli, and he's outside, washing the windows. So you bite the bullet and stroll down there, and take a seat as he works; and when he says, "So, when exactly was you gonna tell me, eh?" it's a little like how Eileen used to ask you where you were when you should have been at a parents' evening, or why you didn't come home last night, or what that visit from the police was all about. You don't get time to give much of an answer because Douglas turns up. He's all smiles, and Steven's all... careful. You wonder whose feelings he's protecting.

Douglas is meant to be living in the US of A, taking care of his dear old sick pa, which begs the question, what is he doing in England, sniffing around your boyfriend? Come back to try his luck again, has he? Looks that way: "We gonna hug this out or what?" he says to Steven, and they do it, they hug, and you want him gone, because Steven loved him enough to marry him, and how much does he love you compared to that? Douglas says something else though. He says, "It's not awkward, okay?" – You'll be the judge of that – and then, "You two were always gonna get there in the end, I just got in the way for a little while."

You could be charitable and believe him, but you're not feeling charitable, and it turns out he wants back into the business. _Steven's_ business. You ask him how much he wants; you'll buy him off, however much it costs. But he says it's not about the money. "I just want us to be able to work together again," he says to Steven, "_Me and you_." And that's not all he wants either, he wants Steven to let him see the kids.

Steven says yes to both.

:::::::

You've left them to it. They're probably still there now, in their deli, catching up. Douglas is likely telling Steven all about how he saw you lose the plot with that Liam fella yesterday, and lose Leah, and how he had to pick her up because she was scared.

You've come to your club, and you head straight upstairs and make a beeline for the bar. You reach for the whiskey and a glass, and pour yourself one. You thought the place would be empty, but Anne's there, you can hear her on the phone to her agent or someone, and she comes out of the office giving them an earful. You don't need this. You don't need anyone around you. So when she hangs up the phone, you spit sarcasm at her, because her problems aren't problems at all. They're shallow. They're about which photographs some magazine is printing of her. They're about nothing.

She spits back though, this girl. She puts you right. She says she paints on a smile but underneath, she's in pain, because the only man she's ever loved is dead, because of you.

It shocks you. What she's said, and the way she's said it. Is Riley Costello meant to be on your conscience now, as well as everything else? Anne thinks so, you can tell she means it, and you never knew she thought that way. But she has armour, doesn't she, just like you. She wears a mask, just like you. Right now though, the mask is off and what she's saying is raw and biting. It's your fault Riley died, because you brought Walker into their lives. "So you can stomp round here, slamming doors," she says, "Because you've had a row with your boyfriend or because your daddy didn't love you enough, but you have no idea what it's like to hurt. And I mean, really hurt."

You're a freak. Must be, if your friend – your only friend, is she? – thinks that all you are is what you seem to be. Only, you trust her, this girl with two names, who's let you know what's behind her defences. You believe that she's enough like you that she won't be floored if you tell her, and you're _tired_, so tired of the secret that's weighed you down and tainted you and wrecked everything that matters in your life, and so you tell her.

"When I was eight years old, my _daddy_ sexually abused me." You have never said those two words together before, _sexually abused_, about yourself or about anybody else.

You're right about Anne: she doesn't run. You think she's going to, just for a second when she takes a step backwards, away from you, but then she gets hold of the empty bar stool and pulls it closer to you, and perches herself on it. "Tell me," she says, and her voice has lost every last trace of the hardness it had just a moment ago. "Tell me, Brendan." She touches your arm and you flinch, and she sees that you can't be touched, not now, and so she doesn't touch you again.

And then you tell her. You only tell her some of it, but what you tell her is more than you've ever told anyone in your life. You tell her that you used to feel safe when you heard him coming up the stairs to bed, but after it started, you didn't feel safe any more. You don't tell her that you've never felt safe since. You tell her, sometimes you pretended to be asleep when you heard your bedroom door open, but it made no difference, all it meant was that he didn't have to talk to you. You don't tell her the things he said when he did talk to you: if you were good, that this secret between you made you special; and if you were bad, if you struggled and fought, that you were weak and made him ashamed to call you his son.

You tell her that you learnt tricks to take yourself away from what was happening to you, like saying your eight times table, in your head, over and over, faster and faster while he did what he had to do. You don't tell her what it was that he had to do, not the details. Not about his hand over your mouth. Not about the smell of him, the fags and the drink. Not about his spit on you. You don't tell her about the hurt, because you couldn't describe it if you tried. You don't tell her that you messed the bed.

She asks you questions. Did you tell anyone? You wanted someone to see for themselves that there was something wrong and make it stop. You were frightened what would happen if you told, and like your dad used to warn you, why would anyone believe a waste of space like you over a man like him? What you say to Anne is, you smacked a kid in the playground because you thought the head would see that something had gone wrong with you and ask if everything was okay at home; but instead of that, he told you that you were a nasty kid, and he let your dad sort you out.

She asks you, how often? You tell her, you stop counting. When it happens, and it happens again, and it keeps on happening, and still nobody notices, nobody helps, nobody saves you – what's the point of keeping count? She asks if Cheryl knows, and you say, why ruin her childhood too? Cheryl can't know. You've protected her from knowing, all her life: that's one good thing that you've done.

Anne asks you when it stopped, and you tell her it never stops, not in your head, "And the world gets this."

"You're not a bad person," she says, and you think – you _think_ – she honestly believes this. But she's wrong, and you put her right, you tell her you're sick, a freak, a monster. "You're none of the above," she says.

You tell her that you infect everything you touch. Then you tell her the thing that you fear most of all, the thing that is front and centre in your head.

"Me and Steven, I'll screw that up to within an inch of its life, and you know I will. It's what I do."

"You've got to tell him, you have to tell him what happened."

Is she right? Tell him how your dad showed you that you're never safe with the person who's meant to love you; ask him if he still wants to take his chances with you, and gamble on how deep that lesson runs?

"Anne, I can't."

"He loves you. Let him know you. He deserves to know the truth." She's crying, hurting. "After everything that you two have been through, you think you can scare him away?"

"I don't know." You make yourself look at her. "I'm scared."

Anne smiles at you, and you think, there are three adults left in this world who you love, and this girl is one of them.

"Course you're scared," she says. "But Ste's strong. He'll deal with it, he'll help you. You've just got to trust him."

"I do, but he... he'll know I'm a fake."

"What d'you mean, a fake?"

"It's not what he signed up for, is it? I'm not... I'm not meant to be a victim, that's not what Steven..." You take a breath, and it hitches in your throat. "I'm meant to be..."

"The strong one?"

"Brendan Brady." The name sounds hollow, absurd, and you laugh at yourself.

Anne doesn't laugh.

"D'you think he left Doug and ran to find you just so you'd _look after_ him? It took guts to do that, after he'd said all his goodbyes and made all his plans, to admit he was making a mistake. He put everything on the line for you. You don't think he's going to turn his back when you tell him what someone did to you when you were a little boy, do you, after all that?"

"I dunno. No. No."

You're going to have to man up and tell him. Anne's right, he deserves to know. Steven deserves to know the truth about you, then he can decide for himself if he thinks the real you is what he wants.


	9. Chapter 9

Another night, another sofa.

You don't know where you are for a minute when you come to. You know that you feel like shit, that you must have put away a whole lot of whiskey, because your mouth is sour and dry, and your head is banging.

_Go tell that long tongue liar... _

Johnny Cash is playing on loop. So, this is not Steven's sofa, the one you banished yourself to the night before because you didn't deserve to share his bed. No, this time you've spent the night in the office at the club.

_Tell the rambler, the gambler, the back biter  
Tell 'em that God's gonna cut 'em down..._

You went back to Steven's last evening, but you didn't stay, and you remember why now, and you remember with a lurch of your stomach that yesterday you laid bare to Anne the truth about your father, and you were going to tell it all to Steven too, but when you got there, something happened. You overheard him when you let yourself in. He was telling his daughter to lie to her mother about you. _Mummy can't find out about me and Brendan... Me and Daddy Doug are very happy._

… _as sure as God made black and white  
What's done in the dark will be brought to the light._

Jesus, your back's killing. It seizes up easily these days – that's what being blasted out of an exploding house does for you – and nights like this one you've just had don't help. You feel like an old wreck: maybe that's why the boy is hedging his bets. One of the reasons, anyhow.

You get up off the couch, and you stagger on your way out of the office: the alcohol in you is making the blood feel sluggish and heavy in your veins. You go to the bar and look at your phone. There's three missed calls from Steven, two last night and one early this morning. You don't listen to the voicemails he's left. You chuck the empty whiskey bottle into the bottle bin behind the bar, then you go to the toilets and wash yourself and drink some water.

You don't go out onto the balcony to try and catch a glimpse of him – you go out onto the balcony for some _air_. You don't mean to glance down at the deli, and when you do, how were you meant to know he was going to be there, arriving for work, unlocking the door? You didn't need to see him. It sure as hell doesn't make you feel any better, and you go back inside your club and slam the door shut behind you. It's dark in here; the light was hurting your eyes.

He didn't look happy, so that makes two of you.

A minute or two later, he calls you again. You reject him. It. The call.

So then he comes to see you. You hear him before you see him, his footsteps coming up the stairs first of all, then his voice, indignant as you walk away from him, "Hey. Why have you not been answering my calls?" You shush him, tell him not to talk over the Man, and he says, "Who?" And you turn and look at him, and you walk towards him and you tell him it's Johnny Cash, and he listens for a moment to the music, and you say, "Wrote a lot of songs about murdering a lover."

"More of a Cheryl Cole man myself, aren't I," he says, and he does a little shimmy with his shoulders, and he's totally misread your mood. Or maybe he hasn't: this is the man who is weaving lies behind your back, who has a plan B lined up, so who knows what the fuck he's thinking? Then he asks you if you stayed here in the club last night, and, "Why didn't you come back to mine?" He steps closer, for.. what? What's he expecting? A kiss? Anyhow, you stop him with your hand in the middle of his chest.

"I heard you," you tell him, and now he gets your mood. You can see in his face that he knows he's been found out when you spell it out, "Teaching your baba to lie to her mama about me. I heard you, Steven." You walk away again, and he says he's sorry, but he's got an excuse: "Right, you know how Amy feels about you, I just wanted the right time to explain – " And he's come to you instead of backing down. He wants to know why you're being like this.

"You told a five year old to deny I exist, Steven." As you say the words, they hurt you, and you feel something like hate for the man standing in front of you. You hate that you've given him the power to hurt you, and you hate him for using it.

He takes a moment to process what you've said, and you wait. It's the dyslexia, you think, that means he has to make an effort to put things in order in his head sometimes, and when you see it happening you can't rush him, because you know if you do he'd feel –

"No, I'm not going anywhere, right, until we've sorted it out." And again, he moves towards you, not away. He's reading the situation right now and there's fear in him, you can see it, but he holds his nerve.

"Okay."

It doesn't go well. Steven is full of _if_s and _maybe_s. _If_ Amy comes back and takes his kids. _Maybe_ in a few months, _if _she hasn't found out, _if _this is still working... What the fuck does he mean? If you're not sick of his face? If he's not sick of yours? Is this just some temporary thing to him, like his marriage was? You ask him, "What do you mean, _If this is still working_? What do you mean?"

"You know what I mean." He's angry, then when you get out your phone and tell him to call her, he's scared, "You're not being serious?"

"If you don't, I will."

He shakes his head, so you dial the number.

He stops you, hits the phone almost out of your hand. His anger is stronger than his fear now, and the truth comes out: "Don't make me choose between you and the kids, Brendan, right, because you will lose, every single time. Well, go on, make the call if you don't believe me."

You don't know how to answer him, but you don't have to because Douglas puts in an appearance, wanting to know why the deli's not open, and you direct your fire at him. Steven gets rid of him though, tells him he's coming, and then carries on where he left off. He says he's sorry, he wishes he could tell Amy but he can't, but that it's not his fault and it's not her fault either, and "If you can't see that... maybe we're just wasting our time, aren't we." He goes then, brushing past Anne on the stairs.

That's it, then. He sounded more hurt than angry in the end but it makes no odds, because he's done with you.

Anne takes one look at you and says, "You haven't told him, have you." She's got three or four young lads trailing in behind her; you ask who they are, and she tells you they're here about the bar job, but she won't let you change the subject. "Go after him, Brendan."

You can feel a storm gathering in you. You don't know how or when it'll break, but you can't have Steven near you when it does. Not again.

"And miss out on all the fun?" you say to Anne. "I don't think so."

She struts through to the office, and you follow her in. She sniffs the air.

"Good God, Brendan, it smells like something's died in here."

"That'll be me."

You sit down behind the desk and lean back in your chair. Anne tuts at you, and goes out to get the first candidate. When she comes back in she slaps your legs off the desk and perches on it, and tells the lad to take a seat.

"So," she says, and looks at her pile of CVs, "Graham, tell me a little bit about yourself."

He's a student, Graham is, studying _leisure management_. He hopes to follow his mum and dad into the family business. He likes football.

You look at him, and you ask, "What are your qualifications?" And he starts telling you about his A levels, and you say, "No, Graham, what are your qualifications for working in a bar?" He says he's worked in retail – Saturday job, etcetera, etcetera – and you get up and walk around the desk and around Anne, and you say to him, "What if something kicks off? You know, Saturday night, lads getting full of themselves, someone comes at you with a broken bottle, hm?"

"Well, I'd – "

"Show me."

"Brendan," Anne says.

"Come on."

"What, like, a sort of roleplay?" Graham says, and he's still sitting down.

"Brendan," Anne says again.

"Yeah," you say, and you turn and look at Anne. "Roleplay."

"Roleplay," she says with her brightest smile, "Good." Meaning, _Not good_. Meaning, _Brendan, no._

As soon as the lad gets to his feet, you've got him in a headlock.

Anne terminates the interview, and Graham bolts out of the door.

You tell the rest of them to get lost.

Anne wants to know what you're meant to do now, and you bear down on her: "Never forget, Anne, that this is my club. Mine."

She looks at you – into you – and she says, "Ste deserves better than this. So do I." And she pushes you out of her way and goes back into the office.

Shit. You should talk to her. But someone speaks to you first, "So, when do I start?" and you turn around and it's another lad, not one of the ones you threw out.

He's young. Dirty blond. Dressed in a hoodie with a blue polo shirt underneath. He's a few inches shorter than you, and slight. And he's got a cheek.

You find out he's not a student, he left school and home as soon as he could, relied on himself ever since. His name is Kevin Foster. He doesn't have a CV but you hire him anyway, and put him straight to work in the cellar.

Anne's not happy, but she doesn't get to decide.

:::::::

You don't leave the club all day. You need a shower but you're not going home before you have to, and you've got nowhere else to go, not any more.

You catch yourself checking your phone, even when you know for a fact it hasn't rung since the last time you checked it. What's the matter with you? Jesus. You need to get over this if it's over. You need to get back to the place you used to be, where nothing could hurt you because the part of you where pain was felt was buried so deep you thought it would never surface, along with the part of you that felt... It's a price worth paying, isn't it? Bury the possibility of love, and in return you're numb to pain.

This is as good a place as any to start burying. It's the end of Kevin's first shift, and you open a couple of beers and take them over to him just as he's about to head off. "Nice one, boss," he says, and you watch him put the bottle to his lips.

Anne comes out of the office, calls you over for a word. "What you doing?" she asks you when you leave the lad and go over to her.

"Well, I was debating getting the kid drunk, and having my wicked way with him. Wanna go first?" As you say it, you realise you aren't going to do it. You feel dead inside, but not in the way you wanted: this death isn't oblivion, it's torment, and it makes you cruel.

"Ste loves you so much. Do you know how lucky that makes you?"

"You need a new sob story, Anne. The whiny one's getting old."

"Don't you dare push me away. Not after what you told me last night."

You told her yesterday you were scared to tell Steven what happened when you were a kid, and God alone knows why but this girl cares about you enough to bother figuring out what you're doing now. You're doing what it takes to make Steven leave you, so you won't have to do the thing that scares you. You're terrified.

"What if Steven doesn't want to know?"

"He'll understand."

You tell her, no one else should have to live with knowing what happened, like you have to live with it, but Anne says if you keep running you'll never be free of what Seamus did.

You can't imagine being free. You don't know what you'd be left with if you were rid of the parts of you made by what Seamus did.

"I hurt those I care about. It's who I am, it's what I do." You're trying to explain, but Anne thinks it's just an excuse. So you tell her the other thing: "I told Steven to choose between me and his kids."

That rattles her – she flinches – but then she tells you again, "He'll understand."

Kevin calls over to you then, "See you tomorrow." You'd forgotten he was there. He goes, and you watch him go, and you're going to go too. You know now, you have to. You have to.

"Brendan, don't. Don't. If you go now, there's no going back."

You kiss her on her forehead, and then you head downstairs, find your jacket behind the bar, and shrug it on as you step outside.

At first, you lose your nerve, and you walk for a while until you're back where you started and the cold air has galvanised you, and you see him. He's not on his own: you look in through the window of the deli and see them both in there, cleaning up. When you go in, Steven's got his back to you. He says, "Sorry," and turns and sees you, and says, "We're closed." He looks pissed off, maybe; or maybe just sad.

"Douglas, do you mind?"

Douglas has the grace to leave without making you ask twice. You shut the door behind him.

You're aware of Steven folding his arms and leaning back against the counter and looking at you, although you can hardly make yourself look at him at all. You've come here to tell him what your father started doing to you before Steven was born, and you don't know how to start, but you've got to, because Anne is right, he deserves to know. Whatever it makes him think of you, he deserves to know.

You make a couple of false starts, so you come clean, "I don't know how to do this, to open up, to talk about... feelings. It... scares me."

"Do I scare you?" He sounds sober, adult. And yes, he does scare you. Or, not him, but your need for him.

You look at him now. "_I_ scare me."

He softens then. "I am going to tell Amy about us."

_Us_.

"Really?" So when he left you in the club today, he wasn't leaving you. You only realise that you'd lost all hope when you feel a little of it returning.

"I hope you know she's never gonna forgive me," he says, and he almost smiles at you. And then he comes to you. "Is it always gonna be like this with us?"

_Always. Us._

"I don't know."

"Cos you know what, right, if it is..." He looks at you for a long time, and you're scared what he's going to say, and then he knocks the breath out of you: "I can live with that. Right, I wouldn't for anybody else, it's only because it's you, okay?"

He's closer now, right in front of you, and he's beautiful, and how did a boy like him, with the life he's had, get to be so... so _generous_.

Jesus, your throat feels tight, and you feel like you might cry. You don't deserve him, but the way he's looking at you, the way he's not giving up on you, makes you want to deserve him if there's any way on earth that you ever can.

"I love you," you tell him. The word _love_ doesn't cover it, but if you start telling him what he means to you, you'll probably scare him off, and you're likely to do that anyway with what you're going to tell him now. So, _I love you _is all you can manage.

"Tell me something I don't know," he says, and he smiles still, like he thinks you're being an idiot.

You say to him – stutteringly – that you need to tell him something that there's no going back from, but he stops you, he says that whatever it is, he doesn't want to hear it. And then he says he loves you too, and his life has never been as good as it is now, and he promises he'll make sure Amy understands.

"Steven, please," you say, and you try again, you stumble again, you tell him that things have happened in your past – and he stops you again, his hands on your shoulders, your neck, and he wants you to know that your problem is that you're always looking back. He says that he's not interested in the past. Has he got a hunch about what you're going to tell him? Is that why he won't let you speak? And Christ, there's enough to be scared of, the things you've done that he's got no idea of, never mind the things done to you. All he cares about, he says, is the future. _The future._

He doesn't look scared. He looks strong, till he says, "We're gonna be alright, me and you, aren't we?" and there's something in the way that his eyes search into you that tells you that he needs you to reassure him too, that he needs you to be as strong as he thinks you are. And that's what you've got to do. If his life's better than it's ever been, you can't throw a grenade into it, because you don't know where the fallout will leave him – both of you. Are you going to be alright, him and you?

"Yeah," you say to him, and he glows. "Yeah, we are."

You kiss, and he's in your arms, and you feel his arms around you, and you bury your face in his shoulder, and you wonder if the strength he gives you will be enough.

When eventually you let go of each other, it feels awkward for a minute. He doesn't know what this was about: obviously he doesn't, you still haven't told him, but he knows there's _something, _even if he doesn't want to hear it. And you think maybe now you never will tell him, and you're not sure if that means your memories are safely interred now, or if they'll haunt you like unexorcised ghosts.

Steven makes things normal again; he finishes tidying up, and he says, "You staying round mine tonight then?" and he locks up and you walk together in the dark, and he chatters on about his day.

If he reached out his hand to you now, you think you would take it. But he doesn't, because he knows that you don't do that.

You pick up the kids on the way – they've been round to play with a mate of Leah's after school – and when you all get back to Steven's place, it's light and chaos and noise and life. Steven runs you a bath after the kids have had theirs, and you lie in it and listen to their three voices as they catch up and wind down. You've got a part to play in the routine: the bedtime story. You're getting good at it, pitching the scary bits just right, and knowing when to leave it for the night so Steven can put them to bed.

You haven't noticed how hungry you are until Steven puts a plate in front of you and you wolf it down. You glance at him and he looks amused, indulgent, and swaps plates with you so you can finish his.

You're tired as well as hungry, and you go to bed before he does and go straight to sleep, and you don't wake up when he comes to bed, but wake hours later and he's lying behind you, his chest against your back, his arm across you, holding you; his breath on your neck. You feel protected, but this isn't right, is it? This can't be what he expected or wanted when he chose to be with you. If he's the one doing the protecting, holding you and holding you together, what's in it for him?

He wakes as you roll over to face him. He smiles and you kiss him, and here's something that's in it for him. You know – you _know_ – that no one has ever made him come alive like you do when you fuck him. It's the one thing that you always get right with him, the one thing that's easy. You fit together, you and Steven, your body and his, and everything else falls away.

:::::::

A good shag does great things for a man's mood. You have a spring in your step at work.

There's one advantage to Douglas being back in the picture. Just one, but it's a good one. The advantage is that he can run the deli while Steven can take the day off and turn up in the club, in a tracksuit, with that sheen on him that a couple of hours of sex leaves him with. He's come to see if you need a hand, he says, and you slap his backside just to be going on with.

You have to take a phone call, and when you come back into the bar he's doing one of the jobs that he knows will need doing, filling the salt cellars for tequila shots**, **only he's spilling most of it, and just as you're behind him and about to get a handful of his arse, he chucks a handful of salt over his shoulder: it hits your face and decorates your black shirt. He turns around and says he's sorry, really sorry, all wide-eyed looking up at you, and he says it's bad luck. Yeah, bad luck for him. You trap him between you and the bar, reach around him for a fistful of ice from the bucket, and drop it down the back of his tracksuit top. He does this intake of breath, and his mouth opens like an invitation to fill it. You laugh, and he grins back at you. You're going to take up that invitation – and then Kevin arrives for work.

"New kid in town, is it?" Steven asks you, and gives him an appraising look. Jealous? You don't mind if he is.

"See ya," you say to Steven, and give his arse another slap on his way out to remember you by while he's gone.

Kevin's a strange one. Little things keep happening with him: he takes off his jacket like he wants you to look at him; he comes into the office to ask if there's anything you need doing, and stands there like a little boy, playing with the bottom of his T-shirt; he accidentally touches your hand when you're showing him how to pull a pint, only you reckon it's not an accident. You know you acted like you were coming on to him yesterday, before you took stock of what you've got and what you've got to lose, so maybe that's why he's doing this... flirting. Maybe he wants some. But, one, it's not his place to come on to you, and two, you're not interested in the likes of him any more.

:::::::

Steven's back to see you, and you get the feeling you're not getting any more work done today. You open a beer for him, and he reckons you should take your drinks into the office, and you don't need asking twice. "Come on," you say, and lead the way, and he's right behind you, his hand on you to hurry you up.

"Brendan, mate – "

You and Steven both turn around at Kevin's voice. He says he's left his jacket behind, and it's true, he fetches it from behind the bar and he goes off back down the stairs. He's _shifty_. And you've told him before not to call you _mate_.

Steven's picking up on something too. "It's a good looking staff member you've hired there," he says, and you tell him it's just a council rat in a tracksuit, and when he says, "Describing me when I was younger," he smiles like he's joking but there's something that tells you he's not.

"Yeah, well, I..." You move towards him. "I prefer the more mature, experienced council rat now." You're going to show him how much you prefer him, only someone's coming up the stairs, and this time, it's your dad. "No," you say to Steven, and jolt away from him.

Seamus makes some crack about interrupting business, and he asks Steven how he is. _Steven_, that's what he calls him.

He's come to tell you he's had a win on the horses and he's sharing his good luck, giving a hundred quid to Chez and a hundred to you, like you're a kid, like he used to give money to you when he wanted to demonstrate to anybody what a good dad he was, and what an ungrateful son you were when you told him you didn't want it. That's what you tell him now, you don't want it, and he says, "Only Brendan could turn down free money. Who knows how his brain is wired?" And you know you're wired wrong, you've always known.

"I'll take it, then," Steven tells him, and you say "Hey," and he looks at you and you shake your head at him, and you can't believe he's undermining you in front of your dad. Whose side is he on?

Seamus tells you he'll get a takeaway tonight for him and you, father and son, all your old favourites, and you remember when he did that when Cheryl and her mum were away and it was just you and him in the house: he let you choose, because you'd been good.

He goes.

Steven comes towards you as if he thinks you can pick up where you left off, as if he hasn't just chosen the wrong side. You tell him you've got work to do, and you turn your back on him, and you're going to go into the office but he stops you, tells you not to give him the brush-off just because your dad's been in. _Just because_. You tell him he's whining, he's clingy, he's needy.

He's riled now. He wants to know if your _relationship_ is always going to be like this. He doesn't get it, he thinks Seamus is dad of the fucking year, and you tell him, "You don't know anything."

He's right in your face now, you can almost taste him. He's yelling at you, he says his stepdad used to knock him about but he still knows what's important to him and how to keep hold of it. He says you need to sort it out with Seamus, because Seamus isn't going anywhere. "You need to man up, Brendan" – that's his parting shot, and it stings you. All of it, the truth of it, it stings you.

Whiskey, and a fistful of ice, and into the office, and do not fucking disturb.

:::::::

He doesn't know anything: you were right when you told him that, but whose fault is it? Yours. You're the one who's keeping him in the dark. Of course he thinks you should deal with Seamus and get over yourself, because he thinks all Seamus did was knock you about, like a million dads and a million sons. He doesn't know the real story, and that's your fault. Your fault.

You've screwed up. You've underestimated Steven, and since he left the club you've spent hours thinking about him. You remember him yesterday, the strength of him giving you strength, the generosity of him giving you pause. You realise – because it's bloody obvious to anyone and it should have been bloody obvious to you – that when he said to Seamus he'd take the money, he wasn't betraying you. All he was doing was trying to move things on, make peace maybe, not be a part of the problem. Not his fault that Seamus is not to be negotiated with; not his fault that he doesn't know why.

You need to fix this. But you can't follow Steven's advice and sort it out with your dad, because when you deal with the Devil, it's the Devil that wins. The way you see it, you've only got two options. One is to do what you were going to do, what Anne wanted you to do, and tell Steven the truth; but what would happen next is what scares you, and the words Steven used to you today make it scare you even more: _man up. _If he knew the truth, he'd know you aren't the man he thought you were, and how could he ever look at you again without seeing the victim in you? How could he want you as a protector after that? As a lover?

The other option is to draw a line, or try to. Move out of the house where Seamus lives. Move in with Steven – not because you've got nowhere else to go, but because it's time. Time to show Seamus that you're not ashamed, even though he's ashamed of you. Time to show Steven the commitment he deserves. Every night away from him kills you. He is your home.

:::::::

You go back to Cheryl's. Seamus is there, eating. You can sense the mood in him as soon as you come in the door, the kind of mood that whenever you sensed it twenty years ago, you knew you were in for a beating.

He barks something at you. You walk in, pass him on your way to your bedroom, and he tells you to tidy it up while you're in there.

"I'm packing," you tell him. "I'm moving in with Steven."

:::::::

You park at the back of the flats, and start getting your bags out of the car but then think better of it. Might make Steven think you're taking it for granted that he'll say yes, if you walk in with all your worldly goods. You leave them there, and walk around to the flat and let yourself in.

He's not happy with you, you can tell by the way he's pouting as he turns to face you.

You throw something at him, a new head for your electric toothbrush, and you tell him you just need somewhere to plug it in: "Permanently."

"Have you had it out with him?" The pout has gone. His eyes have lit up.

"I told him this is where I should be. With you," you tell him, and he looks at you as if you're everything he ever wanted, and you feel as if you really could become the man Steven thinks you are. Things are going to be good.

You unzip the top of his tracksuit, all the way down. You've been wanting all day to do that.

"I been wanting you to do that all day," he says, and the shadow of his eyelashes makes his eyes dark.

You kiss his face off. You hold his head, as he opens his mouth, as he kisses you back, as he pulls off his jacket. He's got a vest on underneath, the sleeveless kind he sometimes sleeps in, and you kiss down the side of his neck then pull the shoulder of the vest out of the way and bite the skin it had covered.

You stop for a second. "Kids in bed?"

"Yeah, but we'd better..." And he heads for his bedroom – your bedroom – turning around and smiling at you on the way so the last few steps he's walking backwards, his arms around your neck, his feet almost leaving the floor as you half carry him into the room.

He crashes onto the bed and you throw off your coat and jacket, and fall on him and kiss him. His hands range over you, clawing at the back of your shirt, pulling at your arse so your groin presses down on his.

You climb off him, stand up, start unbuttoning your shirt, then he gets up too and unbuckles your belt, unzips you. You look down to see the mound that his dick makes in the soft fabric of his tracksuit bottoms. His hand goes into your boxers but you yank it out by the wrist, and he frowns at you, and you drag his vest off over his head and hold him at arms' length, your hands under his arms, to look at him. You rub your thumbs over his nipples, then scratch them hard with your thumbnails and he says _Ow_! and shoves your hands off him. You laugh, and he shakes his head and pushes your shirt off you and onto the floor, and kisses you violently, and tries to bite your tongue.

He falls willingly when you shove him onto the bed again, and when you start to pull his trousers off he obligingly lifts his bum off the bed to make it easier.

He's gone commando. Jesus.

"Fucking little tart," you tell him.

"Complaining, are you?"

You strip down to your boxers and clamber back onto the bed. You kneel astride his legs, and sit on them. His cock is erect in front of you but you don't touch it at first, you play with his balls instead, the skin of them stretched tight as you roll your palms over them. He's writhing.

You spit into your hand and get to work on his cock; his back begins to arch off the bed and a string of words is coming out of him, _Oh, fuck, Brendan, Bren, God..._ and then he sits up and holds on to your shoulders and kisses you, and you keep working on him. He delves into your boxers again but again you stop him: you intend to come in his body, not in his hands.

What you're doing to him is basic but it's effective, and you keep him going as long as you can, squeezing to stop him when he's just on the edge. You're playing him, and he's torn between a kind of petulant anger, and surrendering to you. He likes being shown who's boss, even if he'd never admit it. You smother his curses with kisses, your fingers meshed in his hair.

You push him back so he's lying on his back again, and you relent and jerk him off hard. Every muscle in his body spasms as he comes, then every muscle relaxes until there's one last shudder in his hips. His cum gleams where it's landed on his belly, and you massage it into his skin with your hands.

You leave him sprawled on the bed for a moment to fetch the lube, then go back to him.

There's a particular kind of pleasure to be had in fucking him when he's spent, and you take that pleasure now. His body is languid and available. His gaze on you is knowing, his eyes black and dissolute. All his muscularity is gone: his legs wrap around you but loosely, held in place – just – by his ankles hooked together on your back. His hands reach up to cradle your face, but the effort is too much and his arms drop heavily onto the pillows either side of his head. His mouth is sulkily soft.

You slick yourself with lube and stroke some across his rim, but you don't go in with your fingers. You hoist his legs up higher and push straight in with your cock, and you feel the smooth warm inside of him tighten around you in waves, and you gasp at the sensation. His hands clench, his eyes close, and as you manipulate your position to find the place in him that you know will set him alight again, you watch his face. He fascinates you. There's a purity to his carnality: there's no shame in his pleasure. What he feels and what he lets himself feel are the same thing.

You know when you hit the spot. You can feel it too as you rub your shaft over it, and the tension begins to return to his body. His eyes open and he focuses on you. The sounds he makes don't have his usual decibels, and there are no words this time but moans and low cries, primitive and only for you.

You delay and delay until you've got no choice and your body takes over, and you thrust jaggedly into him and come with a shock that leaves you breathless. He's almost there too, and you pull out of him quickly and finish him off with your mouth.

:::::::

You're lying awake, with a song running through your head like a soundtrack to your thoughts.

_As sure as night is dark and day is light_  
_ I keep you on my mind both day and night_

Steven's asleep, curled in a ball against your side. You're thinking about tomorrow, and all the tomorrows after that. You're thinking, as long as he keeps on looking at you how he looked at you tonight, you'll find the strength to deserve him.

_And happiness I've known proves that it's right_  
_ Because you're mine, I walk the line_

As long as no one stops him looking at you like that – as long as _you_ don't stop him – then you're going to be alright, him and you. You've got to be alright: Steven is the only chance you've got.


	10. Chapter 10

You've been more or less living here for weeks now, ever since New Year when your dad found out that you're gay, but somehow it feels different now that you've made it official. This is your home, here with him. Your suits are hanging in the wardrobe. Your toothbrush is plugged in – permanently – in the bathroom. Your razor is next to his, your moisturiser and aftershave mixed up with his clutter. It's not _more or less_ any more, it's for ever.

Last night you didn't get in til the early hours after a late shift at the club, so you've slept in, and now you're awake and Steven's side of the bed is empty. There's a coffee on the cabinet beside you, and it's lukewarm so it must be a while since he brought it in for you, but you sit up and drink it anyway and listen to the chatter of the kids as their dad wrangles them to get ready for school.

He pops his head around the door.

"Are you decent?" He smiles, and you remember the indecency with which he welcomed you home last night. "Kids want to say bye bye."

You pull the cover up a bit higher across your stomach and run your hands through your hair, and Steven opens the door wider and the children rush in.

"Off to school, sweetheart?" you say to Leah.

She smiles and nods.

"Why are you still in bed?" Lucas asks.

"Because I went to bed late."

"Why?"

"Because I had to work til late."

"Why?"

"Alright," Steven says, "Say bye to Brendan, or you'll be late for nursery, and Leah will be late for school, and I'll be late for work."

"Bye," Lucas says, and wanders off.

Leah clambers onto the bed and gives you a kiss.

"I like your stubble," she says. "Bye bye."

Steven comes over, kisses you, says "So do I," and they all go out. You hear the front door shut and then open again, and Steven comes back into the bedroom. "Cheryl's here," he says quietly, "And she's not happy." He goes again.

Shit. You haven't got around to telling her that you've moved in with Steven. It's only been a few days though, and you've barely seen her, and you assumed Seamus would fill her in, so. You put some clothes on and go and find her. She's in the kitchen, noisily making herself a cup of tea.

"So," she says when she sees you, "Thank you for telling me you've moved out."

"Sorry. Thought you'd know."

"What, Mystic Chez? I only found out when I went into your room to see if you had any washing, and all your things were gone. You know what Daddy said to me? He said it's funny you hadn't mentioned it to me, cos he thought you and me were close. You know what, Brendan? I thought so too, but apparently I was wrong."

"Come on, Chez, I ain't even seen you to tell you."

"You could've phoned. Ste could've told me, he's meant to be my best friend."

"He is. Look, does it matter, hm? I've hardly been at your place for weeks, have I, or you woulda noticed I'd gone. I've... we've just made it official now, okay?"

"Is it me, Bren? Is it Dad? Is that why, because I'll talk to him for you, tell him to stop being – "

"It's not you, Chez, course it's not." You go to her and force her into a hug. "It's ain't even... It's just time, okay? This is where I belong now." You're talking into her hair as you hold her; you're not sure if you could say this if you were looking at each other. "I love him. Me and Steven, it's... we've wasted so much time. _Years_. And I've got this shot at something, it's like a second chance, him and the kids, and – "

"_Second_ chance?" Cheryl eases out of your arms and looks at you. You glance at her to check that she's smiling, then look down, and she says, "Look at you. My big gay brother."

"Shut up."

"I'm so proud of you, Brendan. You and Ste, a proper wee family. You still should've told me, mind."

"That kettle boiled, has it?"

:::::::

You've got through your first full week living together, and this is your second weekend.

Yesterday, the kids' granddad came and got them; they stayed with him in Manchester overnight, and he's not bringing them back until tonight. You were at work when Michael picked them up, so you didn't hear what Steven said to them before they went, but you can imagine there were warnings that they mustn't mention that Daddy Doug has been traded in for Daddy Brendan. It's a touchstone for a fight every time it comes up, every time you see Steven hovering over the kids when they talk on the phone to their mother, every time you hear him telling her that Douglas sends his love. You've managed so far to bite your tongue – you can't let this thing flare up between you like it did that day in the club when you thought you'd made him leave you – but you know things can't go on like this for ever. Secrets have a habit of coming out.

That's a worry for another day, though. Today, you've got Steven to yourself, and you've got a surprise for him. You've got yourself a new car, and you're going to take him for a ride.

"Like it?" you ask, and you watch him run his hand over the BMW's silver bonnet.

"It's mint. When did you get it?"

"Picked it up yesterday."

"Must've cost a bomb."

"Got it on part exchange." Steven doesn't need to know that you cleaned up the last of your dirty money on the deal. "Let's go."

You don't have a plan, but you hit the road. You glance across at Steven as you get out of he suburbs and pick up speed, and he's resting his elbow on the open window and the cold air is ruffling his hair as he leans into it, and he grins at you like a little joyrider. You're not sure if he's still banned from driving, but if he can get a provisional license you'll pay for some lessons for him so he can learn properly. Best not try teaching him yourself: you've got enough reasons to fall out, without adding another one.

You end up on the coast, parked up overlooking a beach that's deserted but for a handful of joggers and people out for a walk. You leave the car and go and get some chips, and eat them as you wander along the scrubby path down to the beach, the heat of the chips warming your hands through the paper wrappings.

"Is this near your nan's house? You know, where you got – "

"No." You snap at him before you realise he was only going to say, _where you got blown up_, not the other thing, because he doesn't know about that. "No, that's Southport, that's too far to go today."

He's felt the tension in you – you didn't cover it up fast enough – and he switches subject.

"Can we go back to the car, Bren? It's freezing."

"Not til you finish them," you tell him. "Don't want my new motor smelling like a chip shop."

You've finished yours, and you pinch a handful of his, and he says "Oi!" and you grab the back of his head with one hand and kiss him. He tastes of salt and vinegar, and you guess you do too. His hand comes up to rest on your face, and it's icy, and you register that you've got your big leather coat on but he's just in a tracksuit with a hoodie over the top, and there's no meat on his bones to keep him warm. You drop your chip wrapper and hug your arms around him.

Somebody tuts. You disengage from Steven's mouth and look around. There's a couple looking at you, in their sixties or so and out with their grandkids, and they're disapproving. Your hackles rise.

"You got a problem?" You direct your question at the old guy. You feel Steven's hand on your arm.

"Too right," the fella says. He's a Scouser. "That's a bad example to set to the kids, that is."

"Oh yeah?" Fucking bigots judging you.

"Yeah," the guy says. "There's a bin just there."

"What?" _What?_

"The chip paper," Steven says, realising what they're getting at before you do. "You dropped it."

You look at him, and he bends and picks up the wrapper before it blows away.

"Sorry," you say to this family, as they stand there disapproving of you and your boyfriend for dropping litter. "I thought... Sorry."

Steven has put the wrappers in the bin, and he comes back to you and tugs you away by the arm, but not before he's said to the kids, "He's a very naughty man."

By the time you get back to the car, you're both laughing.

He goes to open the passenger door but you say, "Warmer in the back seat," and you open the door and chase him into it.

Neither of you feels inclined to undress, so you make like a couple of teenagers, curled around each other on the pale leather seats, kissing and – what did they used to call it? – _petting_. One of the benefits of his wearing trackies is the ease of access, and you feel inside them and the cold of your hand around his cock makes him gasp, and you kiss his wide open mouth, and you grasp his hair with your free hand and kiss his jaw, his cheekbones, his throat, as your fist pumps him hard.

It's cramped, but with his back wedged into the corner and you half-kneeling in the footwell, you manage to free his cock and get into position to suck him off as he comes. Then you clamber onto him and you kiss, and feel his chest heaving against you as he fights to get his breath back.

He pushes you off him.

"Can you move that seat forward?" he asks, and you don't know why he wants you to do it, but you're interested to find out, so you manoeuvre the passenger seat in front of you as far forward as it will go, and now you've got more leg room. "Sit back," he says, and he unbuckles your belt and unzips your jeans, and grabs your cock and balls out of your boxers. Then he wriggles his pants down and settles on your lap, facing front, and starts to grind.

He's not cold any more, and neither are you.

"Fuck, Steven. Jesus."

He's circling on top of you, and you're getting harder, and you can see his knuckles whitening as he grips the back of the seat in front of him, and your fingers are digging into his hip bones, and he's moaning, and you're panting, and if he's not careful you're going to spill all over your nice new car instead of inside him. He stops and looks around at you, and he reaches for your hand and takes your fingers into his mouth, and when they're wet with his spit he raises himself up off your lap and you stroke a slick of saliva across his hole. He's already opening for you, and as your fingers go in you tell him he's a horny little fucker, and as your dick goes in and he twists and arches til he's consuming every inch of you, you reach for his mouth again and he bites and sucks on your fingers as you thrust up into him, and you tell him he's a whore and a bitch and you love him, you love him.

:::::::

It's back to reality. Last night you had to stay out of the way when Michael Barnes brought the kids home, and then you had to listen while Steven asked them if they'd been good and not told their granddad about you. He said he was sorry afterwards, and you said it was okay, and it's true, you do understand why he's scared of Amy's reaction, but still it makes you – this – feel precarious.

This morning he's got to rush off to sign for an early delivery at the deli, so you've got to take Leah to school. That's fine, but if anyone asks who you are at the school gates, Steven reckons you ought to say you're the babysitter.

The question doesn't arise, though, because Leah doesn't fancy a day at school, and rather than fight a losing battle with a little girl in the street in the pouring rain, you ask if she wants to come to the club with you instead, and yes, she does. And having her there to take care of, everything seems simple, just like the way she sees things. She trusts you, even though you've shouted at her before now; she trusts that moods pass and love remains. She sees the good in you.

She's drawing a picture, and you're sitting with her and she's chattering away, and you've got paperwork to do and calls to make, but they can wait. Your priorities have changed. This child and her brother and their dad, they come first for you now, and you're okay with that. You feel calm.

You feel less calm for a moment when Anne comes in seeking refuge. Carl Costello is back in town, and she says he won't stop talking about Walker: that's a name you haven't heard in a while, although it's in your head more than you'd care to admit. The more months that go by without any sign of him, the more you think that he must have gone and joined that brother of his in Hell, because you can't see him leaving you alone this long if he's still alive.

Anne asks you if you've ever thought about finding him, and you answer her honestly. You tell her that you think about it, but that's where it ends, because if you and Walker were locked in a room together, one of you wouldn't come out alive: "Fifty-fifty odds ain't really my thing nowadays."

You know there's something on her mind that she's not telling you, and you tell her she can stay here with you and Leah if she wants. But she doesn't, she gets up and goes, and leaves you wondering. She'd tell you if she'd got some news about Walker, wouldn't she, so it can't be that, but whatever it is, you don't like seeing her so troubled. You'll try and talk to her later, maybe, but right now you've got Leah to keep happy, and the day goes by.

:::::::

He's feisty this morning.

He woke you with a kiss that was more like a bite, and you pretended you weren't interested. When he took your hand and tried to wrap it around his dick you pulled it away. When he tried to kiss you again you rolled away from him. His pleas of _Brendan?_ went from plaintive to grumpy, and now he's sulking, and you turn over to look at him as he starts to jerk himself off, and you laugh, and he sulks some more.

You pull the cover off him and get him by the wrists and pull him towards you, and you're going to kiss him but he won't let you now, and he says, "Oh, right, so it's okay if it's on your terms." So you let him go, and it's stalemate. Then he reaches across you for the lube, and drops the tube onto your chest, and you say, "So is this your terms or my terms, Steven? I'm trying to keep up here."

He frowns at you, and you smile at him and comb his hair with your fingers, and he rolls his eyes and says, "Both, innit," and you sit up on your knees and yank his legs apart, but he wants to play hard to get now and he scrambles away from you and gets off the bed, and he stands there, his eyes shining. You get off the bed and walk slowly round to his side; he leaves it to the last minute to make his escape, and he's not quick enough as you grab him around his middle and lift him up. You're still in your T-shirt and boxers, and he's naked, and you feel twice his size, and he feels tiny and vulnerable in your arms. You lie him on the bed and look around for the lube, and when you turn back to him he's crawling away to the foot of the bed, and you grab his ankles and pull him back, and he laughs – it's that weird braying laugh of his but quieter, and it's kind of sexy. You kiss between his shoulder blades.

You get off him to take the cap off the tube of lubricant, and he makes another bid for freedom, but this time he's not going anywhere. You slap his arse then throw yourself onto his back and get your arm around his neck. His throat is in the crook of your elbow, and he's wriggling and giggling underneath you, and you're squeezing out the last of the lube and –

There's a scream.

You both look at the door, and it's open, and you hear Leah running away.

Steven is out from under you and wrapping a sheet around his waist in zero seconds flat, and he's out of the door staring down the passage when you join him. He looks horrified. He also looks as hot as fuck.

He shoves you out of his way and goes back into the bedroom, and scrabbles around for some clothes.

"I've got to talk to her," he says.

"She didn't see anything."

"Yeah she did. She might of. Why didn't we lock the door?"

"Steven, she didn't see what we were doing. I was on top of you, she didn't see – "

"But what am I gonna tell her?"

:::::::

He's gone and given the kids their breakfast. You're standing waiting in the kitchen, eating Choco Flakes out of the box: well, you need some kind of oral gratification after Leah's untimely interruption.

Steven reappears, and you ask if everything's okay. He looks okay. He's all lithe limbs and morning glow.

"I told her we was play-fighting," he says, conspiratorially.

"Play-fighting?" You put down the box of cereal and look at him, and he's ripe to be played with. "She ask you who won?"

"Why, does it matter?"

You tell him, no, it doesn't matter, only Leah's a clever kid, so – and you scan his skinny body with your eyes – "Gotta make it look believable." You enjoy waiting for the penny drop, and it takes a moment but then it does.

"What – you trying to say that I'm scrawny?" He's affronted, deliciously.

"No. No, not at all, no." You go to the doorway and call along the passage, "Leah! Did your dad tell you who won?" You look back at Steven and walk towards him. "I won, yeah? Uncle Brendan won."

His reaction is worth the wind-up. "I'll show you who's scrawny," he says, and as he says it he shoves you and your back hits the cooker and the impact makes you gasp, and by the time he reaches the word _scrawny_ he's saying it into your mouth, and his hands are on you, bracing your head so he can kiss you harder, and you bring your hand up to grab him back but you stop yourself, and barely touch him, because you want to let him do whatever the fuck he wants.

His body is against yours, all the way down.

"Leah. They're kissing _again_."

This time it's Lucas, and his sister appears too as Steven slides off you and grabs a tea towel and holds it in front of him. You adjust your dressing gown.

"Your daddy was just congratulating me, for winning the play-fight," you say, and you stare at Steven so hard his cheeks flush.

You love the kids, but you can't wait til they're out of the way today, and God must be feeling unusually broad minded today because someone comes to the door, and it's one of the mothers from Leah's school, and she's offering to walk Lucas to the nursery and Leah to school, and they go, and as soon as Steven has shut the door he's on you. He's kicking toys out of the way, and you're shrugging off your robe, and he pulls your T-shirt off and then his own, and you're on the floor on your back and he's at your neck, biting, and then he's gone, and after a minute you follow him to the bedroom and he's got the tube of lube in his hand and he says, "It's empty."

"I'll find something." You go to the kitchen and open the fridge. There's butter there, and you pick it up, but then you see something else. There's a plate in there with cupcakes on it, and they're covered with a thick layer of frosting. You stick your finger into one and taste it: it's sweet and soft and creamy. You take one out and show it to Steven.

"What?" he says, and he smiles like he knows exactly what, and he turns around right here in the kitchen and he drops his pants, and he holds on to the edge of the sink, and he looks at you over his shoulder and says, "Go on then."

The icing is cold on your fingers, and you feel a shiver go through him as you smear it between his cheeks, and you kiss the side of his neck as you push in with one finger and then another. He cranes his neck around to kiss you, and he tells you to do it, and you don't know what particular _do it_ he means but you sink to your knees and you spread him and you go in with your tongue.

The icing's sweet and cool, and he's sour and hot. All your senses are fizzing. As you lick him out you can hear his breaths heaving, and then in between breaths he tells you to fuck him. You get to your feet, licking all the way up his spine as you stand, and then you step out of your boxers and you ask him, "Yeah?" and he says, "Yeah, do it," and he stands on tiptoe as you guide yourself up into him, one hand on his belly pulling him against you, the other clamped over his hand as he grips the sink.

:::::::

Douglas has his uses: when Steven is unavoidably late for work, he's there to open the deli and keep the customers satisfied. Not as satisfied as Steven keeps you, but anyhow.

You wonder if maybe Steven's lateness this morning is the reason Douglas is acting so weird. You're putting out the rubbish outside the club and he comes steaming up to you, all guns blazing, and at first you think it's funny, but it's not so funny when he gets to the point. "If I find out that you been hurting him like you were before..." he says. What's he talking about? He's threatening you with Amy, the police...

"I'd do nothing to hurt him, and you know that," you say.

"Yeah, and I believe you, cos it's not like you've got a track record, right?" He walks away.

Anne's here, she's witnessed the whole tirade, and you say to her, "So much for trying to change, huh?" She asks you if you're serious about putting everything behind you, and you tell her that people like Douglas don't make it easy, but you're trying to move forward.

"But how can you do that when you know he's still out there?"

_He._ Walker, she means, and it's that name again that you want to forget, but for some reason you're not allowed to.

You take her inside, pour you both a whiskey, and you ask her if she's got something to say. She asks if you ever wonder about him, and you tell her you do, every day, and that you hope he's dead and you hope he's suffered, but you can't be the one to make it happen.

"Too much to lose?" she says. "You getting soft, Brendan?"

"For the first time in my life, I ain't beating myself up and I ain't beating up on nobody else either, which... is a bonus, I guess. I can sleep, and not alone. And I don't have to worry about the police knocking my door down." You've thought about this, but you haven't said it out loud before; maybe you've been scared of jinxing it. "I'm..."

"Happy?"

You take a breath, then dare to say it.

"Yeah... yeah, I think so, happy." You look at Anne, and she's not herself, she's not got that smile painted on. "Can the same be said about you?"

She gives you a moment of Mitzeee, about trying to get her career back on track, and then: "And I'm pregnant. From a one night stand with a stripper."

"Wow." You didn't see that one coming. And she's going to get rid of it, so she says, because it was a stupid, stupid mistake. You tell her, don't do that - and you don't know if you're telling her not to have an abortion, or not to beat herself up about her mistakes. And you tell her, you do what you do to get through – and you don't know if you're telling her that a random shag when your heart is bust is what you have to do to get through sometimes, or that choosing to have someone live or die is sometimes what you have to do. You see shades of grey nowadays, where you used to see black and white. "And you will get through," you tell Anne, "By any means necessary."

She stands up, nods her head.

"Thank you, Brendan."

"For what?"

"I don't know. Not judging me, I suppose."

You smile.

"Glass houses," you say, and she smiles back at you and it's the smile of a frightened child, and you take her face in your hands and kiss the top of her head. "You'll do what's right, Anne."

As she leaves, she turns back to you as if she's going to say something, but she changes her mind.

You pick up the two whiskey glasses from the table, and you notice that hers is untouched, and you think maybe she's decided to have that baby, even if she doesn't know it yet.

:::::::

Steven comes by the club with Leah; he's finished work early because Leah's finished school early and they've dropped Lucas off at his judo thing, so you knock off work too and walk home with them. He tells you, Douglas started asking him today about if you were knocking him about, and it was all because Leah had told her ex-daddy about the _play-fighting_ this morning. So the mystery of Douglas's little rant is solved. It would be funny if it wasn't so close to the bone.

You tell Steven it was like the Bay of Pigs, but he doesn't get the reference, and you explain, "Failed invasion by the Americans." You're quite pleased with yourself for that. Then just as you're going in the front door, Amy phones him, and he goes into the usual routine: "Doug says _howdy_." Seriously. And you pick Leah up and you all go in, and standing there in your home is Amy, large as life.

:::::::

She didn't stay more than five minutes yesterday, didn't want to listen to Steven's explanations, didn't want to be in the same room as you, didn't wait to see Lucas. Didn't tell Steven where she's staying. Just said to him, "I'll be back tomorrow, and we'll talk," and looked at you with a look that said you were going to be the subject of the talking; said goodbye to Leah, and left.

You watched Steven trying to keep things normal for the kids. You minded Leah while he went to fetch Lucas, and when he got back his eyes were red, and you reckoned he'd spent the ten minutes alone time on his way to the judo club in tears. You saw his hands shaking as he sorted out the kids' tea.

You had to go back to the club after the bedtime story, and the hours crawled by, and you felt rising in you a sense that something was being put into motion, that some kind of trial was beginning, that you shouldn't have let yourself speak about what you'd got because you've already broken a promise to God, and the God you grew up believing in is a vengeful one. _Happy_, you said: jinxing it doesn't come close.

When you got home it was after one, and Steven was in bed. You tried not to wake him but he woke up anyway, and then he started talking and didn't stop, and you listened to him trying to persuade himself that Amy could be talked round, and all he had to do was convince her that you've changed. _That's all_. And all you could do was hold him and stroke his hair, and wait for your heartbeat to send him to sleep.

This morning, he's up and dressed before you're awake. When you get up he tells you that he's keeping the kids home today so they can see their mother before she goes back to wherever it is she's come from. You thought it was Namibia, but your guess is that she's been back from there some little while.

You answer the door when she knocks.

Steven asks her what she's doing back: "I didn't even know you was back in the country," he says.

"And I didn't know that your marriage was over and you were living with _him_."

"Just pretend I'm not here, please," you say.

"But you are, Brendan. Under the same roof as my children."

"The children are fine, Amy." Jesus, what does she think you're going to do to them?

She wants you and Steven to get lost so she can get the kids their breakfast and get reacquainted, but Steven's not playing ball.

"No," he says, "Me and you are sorting this out, and we're not doing it in front of the kids." She agrees to meet him later on in the Dog, and she leaves for now.

:::::::

You've got the children with you in the club. You're checking your phone every few minutes, but you're not expecting good news.

Lucas is on one of the sofas building something out of Lego. Leah was in the office doing one of her drawings, but when you go in to see her, she's hiding away under the desk. You join her, sitting cross-legged on the floor, and she asks you straight out what she needs to know.

"Is Mummy going to take us away from Daddy?"

You're not going to bullshit her. She's a smart girl, and she deserves better. You tell her that her parents have got things they need to work out, "But it's got nothing to do with you and Lucas, you understand me? It's about me." You tell her that her mum's been missing them like crazy, and they were always going to go back to her eventually.

"You and Daddy could come too."

"It's a nice thought, sweetheart. It's a nice thought," you say, and you wish the world was as Leah imagines it could be. Then she tells you that she didn't _tell_. Is that what's on her mind? She's worried that you think she's brought this upon you all by talking about you to Amy? You put her right, and you tell her you shouldn't have asked her to keep that secret. "Grown-ups should never ask a child to lie to their mother. Ever." You remember the lies you were made to tell, the secrets you were made to keep from your mother and from Cheryl's.

:::::::

You still haven't heard from Steven when Amy shows up in the club. You know how this is going to go, but you try anyhow, because you have to. She tells you she's got nothing to say to you, but you try, you say you're sorry that you and Steven weren't honest with her.

"I've told Ste, I'm taking them with me."

"You can't."

"What are you going to do to stop me, Brendan?" She's come up close to you; her voice is low so the kids won't hear.

"I'm gonna ask you nicely." You keep your voice down too, and you _try_. "Please don't do this to him. Please."

"You can talk," she says, and reminds you of the things you've done to him yourself, and she might as well have stuck a knife into you. Again, you try. You tell her you'd never do anything to hurt those kids, and you'd kill anyone who did. "Exactly," she says, "You'd kill them."

"Come on, it's a figure of speech," you say. Only it isn't: you know in your heart that there's nothing you wouldn't do to keep them safe. But still, you try. "I've left that world behind me, Amy. I promised Steven."

"So you can promise me, can you? You can promise me that none of the things you've done are ever gonna catch up with you? Mm? Yeah, didn't think so."

You feel as if someone's walked over your grave.

You step aside and she walks into the office, where both the kids are sitting waiting.

"You're not taking them now?" you ask her. "You're just taking them back to the flat now, yeah?"

"Yes. We've got packing to do. Come on, say goodbye to Brendan."

You lift them both up, one in each arm.

"See you later," Leah says, and it's what you usually say to her.

"See you later," you say, and you kiss them both and put them down, and you don't know when _later_ will be, because you know what you've got to do. You've got one last thing to try and put this right.

:::::::

You're almost home when you see them go out of the flats, Amy and the children.

When you go inside, Steven's manic. He's boxing up the kids' things to send on to Amy, and he's talking non stop until he drops something and it clatters to the floor, and the noise of it knocks the wind out of him.

"They're gone, Brendan. My kids are gone. I don't even know if I'm gonna see them again." He's beating himself up, says he should have been straight with Amy from the start.

You make him listen to you, and you say what you have to say, because it's the only way now.

"You and I, we... we can live without each other," you say, and inside your head a memory echoes, _I can't live my life without you._

"No," he says. "No, we've only just got together."

You try to make him see, kids need a dad in their lives, a proper dad like him. You can't have him ending up like you, a stranger to his own children because of you, but he doesn't get it. He doesn't see why he can't have them and you; he doesn't see why he has to choose, so you choose for him.

"Go after Amy. Stop them. Bring them back here, and... I'll move out." He shakes his head and you say, "Yes. Or go with her. Whatever she wants with me out of the picture, that's what you do, you understand?"

"You don't mean that." There are tears in his eyes and you can hardly look at him.

"This was never going to work out, Steven... We both know that."

"I can't leave you," he says, but you can see that he knows that he can, and another echoing memory tells you it's true: _Don't make me choose between you and the kids, Brendan, because you will lose, every single time._

"It's them you can't leave." You step back from him. "Go." He tries to kiss you but you can't let him: a kiss goodbye would haunt you for ever. "Go."

He picks up his coat and he's gone.

You stand for a minute, and then you go out, and you follow him into the village. Amy might think she knows you, but you know her too, and you know that whatever Steven promises her, it won't be enough to change her mind. And you've got to be there to pick up the shattered pieces of him that she leaves by the side of the road, because now, for Steven, there is no one else.


	11. Chapter 11

You didn't know if he'd want you in his bed, after Amy took his children from him because of you. Yet here you both are.

"I'm sorry," he said to you after that taxi drove away with his kids, when he turned and saw that you had followed him. _I'm sorry._ Sorry for what? For choosing his kids over you, you guess, even though you'd told him he had to. Sorry it failed, and it's you he was left with? Sorry because he knows that things between you will never be the same as before: maybe that was his sorrow.

He came into your arms, and there in the street you held him, but when you walked home together there was a space between you, and when you tried to tell him you'd do whatever it took, pay whatever it cost to bring Leah and Lucas back to him, he didn't seem to hear you. It was too soon for him to think straight, so you didn't push it.

You had to put in a few hours' work at the club, but he was on your mind the whole time so you finished early and came home, and you were scared of what state he'd be in when you opened the door. The flat was dark, and you found him in bed, and you stood for a moment and held your breath to hear if he was breathing, and over the sound of your heart's hammering you heard that he was. Still you didn't move, you waited and watched him until your watching woke him. He stirred, opened his eyes.

"What time is it?"

"Not ten yet," you told him. "You had anything to eat?"

"Not hungry."

You were starving. You made yourself a sandwich and ate it standing in the kitchen, then you heated up a mug of milk and spooned some sugar into it, and grabbed a handful of cookies out of the jar and piled them on a plate, and took them into the bedroom, and put them down on the bedside cabinet.

"Here."

"Said I'm not hungry."

"Gonna have a bath," you said, and you wanted to stroke his hair but you didn't know if you'd lost the right to touch him, so you left him on his own.

After your bath you went into the bedroom to get a T-shirt and boxers to put on. He was sleeping again, you thought; and the milk had gone, and some of the cookies. You were going to leave him on his own again, because you didn't know if you'd lost the right to share his bed, so you turned to go.

"Where you going?"

"Nowhere." You got into bed.

And so here you both are.

You've been to sleep but you're awake now. He has his back towards you, but not against you as it often is, and the space between you is cavernous. You listen again, wanting to hear the long, even breaths of his sleep, but instead you realise that he's crying. You prop yourself up on your elbow and put your hand on his shoulder and say, "Steven," but he shrugs you off and you lie back down and you don't know what you can do that will make him – or you – feel better.

Next time you wake up it's because he's shaking you, and as soon as you open your eyes he's trying to drag you onto him. You let him pull you so that you're on your side and facing him, but what he's doing is making you uneasy: the desperation of his mouth on yours; his hand blundering under your T-shirt and reaching around your back to press you against him, wanting to haul you on top of him as he rolls onto his back. Many times he's been avid for you, but this is different. When he says, "Come on, Bren. Come on, I wanna fuck," there's not the usual spark of desire and challenge in him. Instead, his eyes are blank and his face is smudged with tears.

"Steven," you say, and you hug him against you, try to calm him down but he says, "What's the matter? Don't you... why don't you want me?" – and is that it? Does he think when you said today that you would move out, that you were just shrugging your shoulders? Does he think that it was easy for you to walk away?

"Jesus, Steven." You kiss him, and he breathes hotly into your mouth and grabs at your body, and you prise his hands off you so you can scramble out of your clothes.

You're barely inside him before he says, "Harder," and you feel his heels under your arse trying to force you deeper, and you do what he wants, and his head jerks back into the pillow, and his fingers dig into your shoulders. And then his legs uncurl from around you, and he pushes you off him and you're confused, but it's a different position he wants, and now his knees are hooked over your shoulders and you enter him again, and he says, "Hurt me."

Often, you're rough with him but it's a game that you both know you're playing, and it's not what's happening here . It's not pleasure he's wanting: he's chasing oblivion, and it's an impulse you recognise, and you think there's something else you recognise too. Does he think that he deserves it, to be ill-treated, to be abused? Does he think it's all he's worth? "Hurt me," he says, and you ease back from him and say, "No," and he says, "Why not? You might as well," and he's angry, and you can't tell who he's angry at, you or himself, but either way it kills you.

You're not going to hurt him. You won't be a weapon for him to use against himself, so when you plunge into him as deep as you can go, there's nothing violent about it, and if it frustrates him it's only momentarily, because as you rock with him, the backs of his thighs braced against your chest as the weight of your body bends him in half at the hips, he goes with you and his cries start coming.

His eyes are screwed closed. Usually you tell him to open them when he comes, and when you come, but this time you don't because if he looks up at you now, you're scared that you'll find yourself looking into the eyes of a man you don't know.

:::::::

His head is on your shoulder when you fall asleep, but by morning he's moved away from you again. You get up and get dressed for work, and then you sit and listen to him moving from bedroom to bathroom and back, and eventually he appears. It looks like he's taking the day off work, as he's not in his deli uniform.

He sits himself down in front of you, and hands you an envelope without saying a word. In the space of a few seconds your mind races. The only time he's written to you in his life before was one day last summer, when he told you that he'd got even with you and had chosen to spend his life with Douglas. What's he saying now? Goodbye? But this is not a letter, it's a card, and you realise what it's for. It's Valentine's day.

He doesn't even look disappointed that you've nothing for him. He looks as if it's just one more thing that he doesn't have.

He leaves the room then comes back with his jacket on.

"Going down the school," he says. "Got to tell them Leah's not coming back."

"Steven – " you say, but he's gone.

You open the card. There's a picture on the front of a door with a _Do Not Disturb _sign hanging on the handle, and on the inside there's a printed message saying _Happy Valentine's Day to my boyfriend_, and between _Happy_ and _Valentine's_, Steven's drawn a little arrow and written _1__st_. Then underneath, in his best handwriting, it says, _Your worth the wait. Love you_, and then all along the bottom he's put – and you count them – seventeen kisses.

You guess he wrote this before Amy showed up yesterday.

You don't deserve him. You knew it before and you know it now, but you've got to at least try to make things better, so you make a few calls to track down the phone number of that lawyer, the one who got Mercedes McQueen off the hook when the smart money said she had no chance. You reckon Jim McGinn performed some sleight of hand back then, and Christ knows what the truth was among all the stories he spun to get his client off – you suspect that shifting the blame for Lynsey's death from Dr Browning to Riley Costello was strategic, but that's one of the sleeping dogs you're letting lie for now. Anyhow, it's McGinn's determination you want to hire, not his morality, so you give him a call and ask him to meet you at Chez Chez.

:::::::

You've rung Steven, told him you've set up this meeting, and he's not impressed. He's been to the school and now he's on his way to the nursery to explain about Lucas, and you tell him, if he comes and meets this lawyer with you maybe he won't even need to explain to the fucking nursery, because maybe he'll be getting his kids back. He says he'll come to the club when he can, and if he's in time he's in time, and if he's not he's not, but it won't make any difference either way.

Jim arrives, and you explain the situation, and he's up front with you that it's not his field but he knows a bit about it, and he says there's a fighting chance in the light of Steven having had sole care of the kids while Amy was out of the country. You phone Steven again, and after a few more minutes he shows up.

Probably doesn't help to have a domestic in front of the lawyer.

Steven doesn't want to go to court about this, he'd rather try and talk Amy round, but you point out to him that she isn't even answering his calls. You need a drink, and Kevin's there so you tell him to pour you one, and it's not your first, and Steven's all up in your face then, "Oh yeah, cos drinking in the daytime, that's gonna help the situation, innit." You tell him you're trying to help, but he says it's not what he wants. Then Jim offers to go through the facts for Steven, and Steven doesn't see the point but you say, "Hear him out, please," and he relents and stops to listen.

It sounds to you like there's hope, and as you listen you start wondering if it's a road you could go down to get to see your own kids, at least the first step, which Jim stresses is the best option: negotiate with the mother.

As soon as Jim goes, Steven says, "Didn't need that."

You look at him. He's angry and not in the mood to be helped.

"We'll get your kids back, Steven," you say.

"Stop saying it, Brendan. Right, cos you know for a fact, Amy's gonna fight to the death to keep them kids away from you." He starts walking away.

"So then we convince her that I've changed." As you say it, you can feel your temper rising, threatening to make your words a lie.

"Yeah, with a glass of Scotch and a weirdo lawyer, yeah." He's heading for the exit.

"You know what, forget the lawyer, " you shout, "And forget the Scotch," and you throw your glass and it misses his head – just – and smashes against the door.

He turns and looks at you, and he doesn't look as shocked as you feel. He looks let down.

"Sorry, I..." you say. "Steven, I'm sorry – "

He's gone. _Hurt me_, he said, and you have.

:::::::

You've been calling him, or trying to: he's not answering. You've left messages telling him you need to chat, talk things over. You need him to hear that you're sorry, and to believe it, but every time you call it goes to voicemail, and you can feel your life – the good things in it – falling away piece by piece. And it's your own fault, you've fucked it up, and you're mad at him but mainly you're mad at yourself, and again his number goes to fucking voicemail and you lash out at the nearest thing. This time the nearest thing doesn't matter, it's the door of a cubicle in the toilets. and you kick it off its hinges.

You stand there for a moment to get your control back, and then you start to leave but something catches your eye. The door knocked the cover off the toilet roll holder as it fell, and what was hidden inside is now exposed: it's a packet wrapped in plastic and tape, and you pick it up, and you know what it is. Someone's brought drugs into your club, enough to sell. Enough to get the club closed down, and enough to get you sent down.

This is all you need. You put it into your pocket and go out of the toilets and into the office, and shut the door. You need to get rid of it, but there are punters around now and you can't be seen flushing white powder away, so for now, you lock it in the safe, and you think. There's no point looking through the CCTV footage because you don't know how long ago the stuff was hidden, and people go in and out of the toilets the whole time.

When you get back to work, everyone you look at is a suspect.

:::::::

You've taken a whiskey out onto the balcony and you're getting some air, when you hear police sirens. It takes a few seconds for the sound to register, but when it does you run back inside, push through the customers and get to the office, and get the cocaine from the safe. Then you run out again and down the steps, and you'll have to bin it somewhere and hope it doesn't get found because your prints are on it.

"Brendan? Is that what I think it is?" Steven's appeared from nowhere. "Go on, let me see." He grabs it off you.

"They're not mine."

"Drugs?"

This is worse than the police finding them. This is Steven thinking you've broken another promise.

You tell him you found them. You make him look at you, and you tell him, "You know I don't do this any more. I don't."

"What was I thinking, giving up my kids for you?"

He shoves the package back at you, and leaves you. You bury it among someone else's rubbish, and get back to the club, and all the time you're sitting there while the police move the customers out and search the premises from top to bottom, all you can think about is Steven, and what he meant when he said he'd given up his kids for you. You thought it was you he'd given up but that Amy was being stubborn in still taking the kids anyway. Only now you're wondering if he'd tried to hold on to you as well as to Leah and Lucas, and that was why Amy didn't relent.

The police find nothing. They don't apologise, but they let slip that they were acting on an anonymous tip-off. Someone has tried to set you up.

:::::::

You didn't get home until the early hours, and like the night before, Steven was in bed. You thought about sleeping on the sofa, but in the end you let him decide: he could have told you to get out when you got into bed, but he didn't. Probably he would have done, but it would have meant he'd have had to stop pretending to be asleep.

He's gone to work by the time you wake up in the morning. You're woken by a phone call from your sister, who has been arrested for offences related to prostitution, and has spent the night in a police cell. Jesus. You get some of the story from her, enough to know that she's guilty only of stupidity, and she says she didn't call you til this morning because she knew there was a raid at the club and thought you had enough on your plate. You tell her you'll sort it, and you do, you make a call and send her a solicitor. Then you call Steven and leave a message on his voicemail. You apologise again for throwing a glass at him yesterday, and you tell him that the drugs were planted, and as you say it you remember Amy asking you if you could be sure that your past wouldn't come back to bite you, and you wonder if this set-up was proving her right.

On your way to work you look in the deli window. Steven looks pissed off, and you chicken out of going in to see him. When you eventually bite the bullet, he looks at you as you walk in, and his mouth forms that perfect pout that set you imagining all kinds from pretty much the first time you ever laid eyes on him. It's distracting.

You ask him if he's avoiding you. He says he had orders to sort out: that's a yes, then. He still hasn't heard from Amy, and he says he can't say he blames her, the kids probably are better off with her.

"For the last time, Steven, the drugs, they ain't mine."

"Course they aren't."

It's fucking frustrating. You know it's your fault that Amy's taken the kids, but for Steven not to believe you over things that aren't your fault... You thought you'd got past this, the two of you.

"Read my lips. They ain't mine."

"You finished? Only I got paninis to wrap."

You put your hand over his to stop him doing what he's doing and make him listen, and you tell him that someone put those drugs in your club, and you're going to find out who. Then you walk out and head back to work.

:::::::

There's something about Kevin.

Every time you turn around, he's there, and you've seen him watching you, and you know nothing about him, not really; and yesterday you startled him as he came out of the toilets, and he was... twitchy. So you're wondering if he knows something about that cocaine.

You're going to talk to him, only Steven comes to see you. He's heard about Cheryl's bit of bother, and you tell him she'll be out in an hour. Then he says he wasn't thinking straight before, with all the stuff with Amy on his mind, but if you say you didn't know anything about the drugs, he believes you. He's changed his tune, but you can't help wondering what would happen if you needed him in your corner when it really mattered.

"You didn't believe me, did you? You couldn't take my word for it, could you?"

He doesn't say anything. He just slouches off, but Kevin's still there behind the bar, watching and listening, and you focus on him now.

You ask him about the drugs, and he denies it. You know he's not the brains behind it anyhow. "The question I have is," you say to him, "Who made you put the stash in my club?" He fronts it out, tells you to check the CCTV, looks you in the eye, and you're inclined to believe him: he's just a kid, and he'd be more scared of you than he appears to be, wouldn't he, if he was guilty? You issue a vague threat to kill him if you ever find out he's lied to you, but for now, you're going to let it go.

:::::::

Seamus calls in at the club. He's taken to doing that, more so since you moved out of Cheryl's and in with Steven, and it's always at times when it's quiet, and you'll turn around and he's there, and you don't know what he wants, and you get angry with yourself for the shiver of fear that runs through you because, what can he do to you now? You're taller than him, stronger, so you ought to man up. Only it happens every time: he unnerves you.

This time, you're in the office and there's a shadow in the doorway and it's him, and you begin to sweat.

"What do you want, Dad?"

"Can't your old man come and see you now, son?" He bares his teeth in a smile.

"I'm working." You look down at the papers in front of you on the desk, and try to read the figures but they're out of focus now.

"Had a little win, thought I'd share the good fortune. You can take Steven out, my treat."

"No," you say quickly, then, "No thanks. I don't want your money."

"Tell him you won it yourself if you like. It'll be our secret."

_Tell them you caught it yourself if you like. It'll be our secret._

You're nine, maybe ten years old, and it's a good day. You're at the beach, and your stepmum's there, and Cheryl and a friend of hers, and all of you are making patterns of shells and pebbles on the sand around the sandcastles you've made; and then something blocks out the sun, and you squint up and see your dad. _Coming to see what we can catch in the rock pools, son?_ You shake your head, and he says, _Oh, you'd rather play the little girls' games?_ And he winks at the girls, and this pal of Cheryl's giggles, and your dad holds his hand out to you, and you take it and he pulls you to your feet, and he picks up the fishing nets, and you walk off with him beyond the breakwater, your hand in his.

The rock pool fascinates you. If you watch for long enough, you see that the stillness of the water is an illusion and in reality, it's teeming with life. You've got a shrimp net and you trawl it slowly along just beneath the surface, and when you lift it out there's a tiny crab in it, and you show it to your dad and he says, _Not worth having_, and you shake it out onto the sand and it stays still for a moment as if it doesn't know which is its best hope, running or playing dead. Then it scuttles away into the shade of a rock.

There's a splash and the water is disrupted. Your dad has plunged his hand into the pool, and when he pulls it out he's holding a crab the size of his clenched fist. _What about that, Brendan?_ he says, and he holds it out for you to look at, and he laughs as he waves the creature in your face, and you jump backwards but you laugh too. He drops it into the fishing net and twists it so the top is closed and there's no escape. _Tell them you caught it yourself if you like. It'll be our secret_, he says, and you say, _Okay_, and then when he starts to unbutton his shorts, you say, _No._

The crab is struggling. You concentrate on it, its claws trying to dig down into the sand, its fragile legs flailing. Every move it makes tangles the net more tightly around it.

"It'll be our secret," Seamus says, and you put down your pen and stand up.

"I said no, didn't I?" you say, and he stares at you for a moment, and then he goes.

You need to get away.

:::::::

You've called Eileen. The kids finish school today for the half term holiday, and with all that's happened with Leah and Lucas, and with the way everything's started to feel in a state of flux, you badly want to see Declan and Padraig.

Eileen surprised you. They'll be in Dublin for the week, she said, and if you want to go over she won't stop you, but she won't have you in the house, and you've got to understand that if the boys say they don't want to meet with you, she's not going to force them. It's more than you'd dared hope for, and it feels like a lifeline.

You go to the deli to tell Steven. He's outside, and you tell him straight out, "Gonna go away for a few days."

"Oh, right... Want me to come with you, then? Doug can handle this place for a few days on his own."

You didn't expect him to say that. Not after he walked out of the club today; not since you lost him his children.

"Think I'll go away, just me. Get out of your hair for a while."

"I was wrong to accuse you, but... you get why I did." There it is: however much you try and change, it'll never be enough to put your past to rest.

"You're gonna be okay on your own for a bit, aren't you?"

"Yeah," he says, but he doesn't seem certain, and you think maybe he'll ask you to stay, maybe he needs you as much as you need him. Then he says, "Yeah. Course I will."

:::::::

He comes home and watches as you pack your bag. You wonder if you're doing the right thing, giving yourself space, giving him space too, when there's been too much space between you these last couple of days. You're frightened that when you come back, he'll have decided that being with you is still the mistake he thought it would be two months ago, when he was planning on putting three thousand miles between you for the rest of your lives. You have to take that risk though, because you need him to be with you only if he wants to be.

You spend a couple of hours tying things up at the club before you have to leave for the airport. Steven comes to see you off, and you stand by the taxi in the pouring rain, and you tell him, "If you don't want me to go, Steven, all you have to do is say," and you want more than anything for him to say, _Stay with me._

"No, go. Have a nice time with your kids, yeah?"

You'd give anything if he could be with his kids, and that's what this is, or part of it anyhow. If he wants to call Amy and tell her you've gone, this is his chance. That's why you don't pull him into your arms like you want to, and hold him and kiss him: in case this is goodbye.

:::::::

You get a taxi from Dublin International and it takes you a couple of miles south to your hotel, and you ask the driver to wait while you check in and dump your bag in your room, then the cab drives you the rest of the way to the city centre. Eileen and the boys aren't due to arrive from Belfast until tomorrow, and you can't face spending what's left of the evening out in the suburbs.

By the time you're in town, you've just got time for a couple of drinks, and you go to a pub you know just north of the river. It's a kind of relief to be here, and you hope this trip and the distance it gives you will clear your head; and you hope that with you out of Steven's hair, he will find himself resenting you a little less and wanting you a little more.

Two double Bushmills in, and your perspective starts to shift a little. You start regretting cold-shouldering him when he came to tell you that he believed you about the drugs, and that he was sorry he hadn't taken your word at first. Fuck. After everything he knows you've done, and everything he knows you are, how can you let him apologise to you, let alone throw it back in his face when he does? You lean on the bar and you close your eyes, and you remember when he said to you, _You'll always be my problem_ and stood by you even though you weren't even together then. He meant it, didn't he? He doubts you but he comes back to you.

You don't deserve him, but you want with all your heart for him to decide you're worth another chance.

You leave the pub and you walk round the corner and make it to the off licence just as they're pulling down the shutters to close up. You get a bottle of whiskey to take back to your hotel. As you stand waiting to pay, you notice on the counter a box of padlocks, with a sign printed on it saying _"Love locks" __€14_. You pick one out of the box.

"I'll take this too," you say.

"I'm obliged to advise you," the fella behind the counter says, and you can tell by his sardonic delivery that it's a line he's said many times before, "You best not be hanging it on the bridge, or the City Council will be after me."

"Course not," you say.

He takes your money then says, "There's a pen there, if you're wanting to write something on it. Permanent marker, so."

You take the pen, and you smooth your thumb over the cold metal of the padlock, and then you write on it _BRENDAN_ and then _STEVEN._

On the Ha'penny Bridge, the air is colder than it was in December.

You walk quickly to the place where you found him that night. You remember him turning away from you and holding on to the railings, and that's where you stand now and look down into the water flowing darkly beneath you.

_They're called love locks. If you love somebody, you write both your names on a padlock, and you throw the key into the river. You weren't thinking of doing one, were you?_

The lock clicks closed. You're still for a moment, and then you kiss the key, and you throw it. You see it glint for a fraction of a second in the light cast by the lamp beside you on the bridge, and then it disappears from sight, and you imagine it floating under the water, and resting on the river's bed for ever.


	12. Chapter 12

This hotel bed is bigger than the last hotel bed you slept in. It feels too big for you on your own, but so did the last one in the nights before he came.

It's Sunday morning and you've got nothing to get up for, not yet, but later you'll be meeting your sons – or anyhow, you hope you will. Yesterday you spoke to Eileen on the phone. They'd arrived in Dublin and you wanted to see the boys straight away, but she said no, she wanted them to get settled first, but she would ask them if they wanted to see you on Sunday. Then later she called you back and said they'd agreed, and you could take them for a pizza, and she told you where and when, and she said, "If you let them down, Brendan, I swear..."

You're not going to let them down this time. Since your last attempt to be a father to them, you've had a close-up view for the first time in your life of what is entailed in being a good dad. Steven makes it look easy, and you've watched him and tried to work out what it is that he gets right, and you think maybe what he does is, he doesn't worry about getting it wrong. As long as he loves Leah and Lucas, and they know that he loves him without him having to say it, then everything – playing with them, bathing them, telling them off, fighting over bedtimes or eating their greens or whatever – falls into place, and the dramas pass, and what he is to them and what they are to him is taken as read. He doesn't try to prove himself, he just _is_ himself, and that's enough.

Your eyes are closed, and you catch yourself rehearsing the conversations you'll have today with your sons, but you force yourself to stop, because it's a trap you've fallen into in the past: you've imagined it would go a certain way, and then floundered when Declan deviated from the lines you'd written for him in your head. There are things you can't control, and you need to accept that.

There's a knock on the door. You feel your heart speed up. What if it's Steven? What if he's followed you to Dublin like he did before?

By the time you get out of bed and open the door, you've talked yourself out of your delusion. He wouldn't come, not after the way you left things on Friday. He'll be trying to get his kids back, not thinking about you. And you're right, it's not Steven, it's a chambermaid wanting to clean your room.

:::::::

Your hotel is only round the corner from the house, but Eileen won't have you pick the boys up from there. Her fella's there, you guess, and she doesn't trust you to behave yourself if you see him. She's right, probably; you hate the thought of that man playing dad to your kids. But that's not all. Even now, the thought of Eileen with another man makes you panic: you panic at the thought of her comparing you to him, and finding you lacking, even though she knows now why you never went near her without a drink inside you, and why your handling of her body was tentative and unconvincing. You are in love with a man, openly now, but your failure to be the man you were expected to be still weighs on you, however hard you try to shake it off.

You're in the pizza place early. You're drinking a black coffee, hoping it will mask any trace of the Dutch courage you swallowed before you left the hotel.

There are mums and dads here with their children, a few couples, and there are Sunday dads out with their kids, these ersatz families getting along with different degrees of awkwardness, hostility, eagerness to please. Seeing them makes you feel more, not less alone in this part-time fatherhood, because you're not like them. They've lost their marriages, these men, through cheating or being cheated on, through boredom, through fucking up the work-life balance. None of them lied in front of the priest at his own wedding, or turned away from his wife because she was a woman, or did everything he could to stay out of the family home because his children made him remember when he was a child. None of them is a freak.

"Dad!"

Padraig comes rushing to you, and you grab him to stop him careering into the people at the next table. You look towards the doorway, and Eileen and Declan are there; she crosses the restaurant towards you, with him following behind her with reluctance in every step. You stand up, and Eileen allows you to kiss her on the cheek. That's one of the things you've negotiated with her on the phone, a promise from her that she'll save her hostility for when the boys aren't there, and attempt a show of civility when they are.

"You joining us?" you ask her.

"No. Better if I don't," she says. "Declan, you'll bring Paddy home, yeah? No going off on your own."

Declan nods. Eileen goes. The boys sit down.

:::::::

"So, you still single at the minute are you, Dad?" Declan looks at you levelly.

It's not been going too badly til now. Padraig's talkative, there's no chance of any awkward silences with him here to fill them. Declan started out monosyllabic, except for when you asked either of them a question, then whatever the answer was, what you'd get from Declan was a variation of, _You'd know that if you hadn't left us_.

You've asked how they get along with their mother's fella. Padraig tells you, "He's alright," and you glean from further questioning that _alright_ means that he likes him, that if there's any telling off to be done it's down to Eileen, that the man is to be trusted: you look for any sign, the slightest tell in your sons' faces that there might be something amiss, something secret, but there's nothing. You would see it if it was there, because you know what to look for.

Declan's tired of you asking the questions, and that's when he asks you that one of his own, "So, you still single at the minute are you, Dad?"

You think he's trying to rattle you.

"No," you say. "No, I'm not."

"What's his name then?" Declan asks, and takes a bite of his garlic bread.

Fuck. You glance at Padraig. Does he know you're gay? You didn't think he did. You didn't even think he knew what it meant, he's just a little kid. Jesus.

"D'you..." you begin, then you look at Declan. "Does your brother know, y'know, I'm..?"

"Course he knows you're gay. Don't you, Pad?" Declan is enjoying this.

"Sure," Padraig says. "You like boyfriends instead of girlfriends. Like Macca."

Fuck. How does he know about you and Macca? You feel a drip of sweat roll down your spine.

"What d'you mean?" you ask.

"Didn't you know? Macca's got a boyfriend."

Okay. You breathe again.

"Oh yeah, yeah I heard."

"So who's your new _boyfriend_ then, Dad?" Declan asks.

A waiter has come over to ask if you're ready to order desserts, just in time to overhear Declan's question.

"Have what you like," you say to Padraig, and he's far more interested in the dessert menu than he is in your love life, and the waiter looks curious rather than shocked, and you've got nothing to be ashamed of. "It's Steven," you tell Declan. "I'm living with him now, so."

"You're back together?"

"Before Christmas. You okay with that?"

"Yeah, Ste's sound."

"Yeah, he is."

"Can I have Death By Chocolate?" Padraig says. "And a strawberry milkshake."

:::::::

You've got a voicemail from Anne. You must have slept through your mobile ringing, because she called you at two in the morning and you didn't get the message until you checked your phone when you woke up.

You stand at the window. There's frost on the cars parked on the street below, and there's not enough warmth in the pale sun to melt it.

Anne's voice sounds like a little girl's – maybe it's the effect of the recording.

"Brendan. Just wanted to see if everything's okay now. I thought you might've rung me, but... Anyway, Maxine will have told you about Carl and everything, and I'm sorry... and I'm sorry I didn't say goodbye, Brendan, I tried to but you'd gone." You hear her swallow and take a shaky breath, and then you visualise her switching on her best, painted-on Mitzeee smile as she says, "Anyway, so, come to California. You and Ste, all the kids, it'll be... Just take care, Brendan. Bye for now. Bye bye."

You sit down heavily on the bed, and you try to think what could have made Anne take off for the States without any warning. It sounds like maybe she's gone to live with Carl Costello, and you know she had a thing with him once: she told you about it one drunken night at the club after closing, as you sat together on the couch, her high heels off and her feet tucked up under her, and her head on your shoulder, and your voices quiet and slurred. You don't think she'd be with him again in that way – not after Riley – but maybe she wants to be a part of a family, with her baby on the way.

When you landed in Dublin on Friday night you had a missed call from Maxine. You assumed at the time that it was about work and that she'd try again if it was important, but you guess now that she was wanting to give you her sister's message. You won't ring Maxine; you'll be back soon enough, and no doubt she'll tell you then. And you won't ring Anne, because what's the point in knowing all the details now, when what's done is done? You already know the one fact that you've always known, which is that everyone you love goes away in the end.

Anyhow, you can't phone either of them, because you're not phoning Steven, and you won't put them before him. You can't phone Steven because this time is for him, to figure things out without you in his hair. He's got to do what's right for himself and for his kids, promise Amy whatever he needs to promise, and he's made it crystal clear that your interference isn't something he wants. And there's another thing that stops you phoning him: how can you tell him that it's going okay, seeing your kids – that you think you're making progress? You can't, when his own kids have been torn from his arms.

:::::::

You've taken the boys out a couple more times – once together, and once just Padraig on his own when Declan didn't want to go – and it's been better than you'd dared to hope it would be.

The rest of the days you've filled somehow, going into town, and to the gym a few times. You've walked some of the same streets you last walked with Steven, and you miss him. The nights have been long and you've been drinking hard, in the bars in the city or back in your hotel bedroom on your own, just to stand a chance of sleeping. But you're having nightmares again like you used to, fractured images from your old life vying to be the one that's still in your mind's eye when you wake: your dad coming for you; Danny Houston, his eyes still looking at you when he's dead; a butchered body; a prison cell. Your dreams aren't haunted when Steven is asleep beside you, and it scares you how much you need him. You want him, too, as much as need him: not just the touch and the taste of him and his body beneath you, but his voice, nagging you and calming you and grounding you; and his love, though you don't deserve it.

Eileen's taking your sons back to Belfast tomorrow, so this is your last chance to see them, for now. You've booked your flight home for first thing in the morning.

You've been to the pictures with the boys, and now you've gone to a burger bar where their mother comes to meet you to pick them up. Declan goes to get her a cup of coffee, and Padraig goes with him.

"I was thinking," you say to her carefully, "Maybe they could come over, you know, in the Easter holidays. If they want to."

"After what happened last time Declan went to see you?"

"We've been through this, Eileen, that was... I won't let anything happen to them. You have my word. Come on, this week's gone okay, ain't it?"

"Yes, when they've had me to come home to after a couple of hours. If you think you've done enough to make up for – "

"Let me make it up to them. Please." You see that the boys have reached the front of the queue now, so they'll be back in a minute, and you continue urgently. "Look, I'm not the same any more, I don't... I'm not in that world, the dealing, the... I'm straight now, I'm - "

Eileen laughs, "_Straight_?"

You take the joke. "Yeah, not in that way, but... I'm not doing anything illegal no more."

"Declan tells me you're with that young lad again, is that right?"

"Yeah. Steven. He's... he's got kids of his own, you know, he's a good dad, he'll look out for the boys if they come over, Eileen. Will you just think about it?"

"I'm sorry, Brendan. Maybe you can come over again, but it's gonna take a lot more than a bunch of promises before I'll let them go and stay with you and your..."

"His name's Steven, Eileen." You can feel your temper rising in you, but the kids come back, and you repress it.

:::::::

You got a goodbye hug from Padraig, and a "See ya, Dad," from Declan, and now you're on your own again, and it's your other children you're concentrating on. You're shopping for presents for them, in the toy shops and the tourist shops. When you're done, you buy some wrapping paper too, because you think there's just a chance – a slim one, but still a chance – that when you get home, Leah and Lucas will be there, and you want their presents ready to give them if they are.

For Leah, you've bought a box of glittery colouring pens – because even if she's not around, her pictures will always paper the walls – and a little Lego figure of a leprechaun; and for Lucas, a green hoodie with a shamrock printed on the back. Back in your hotel room, you wrap them up, and you label them, _TO LEAH_ and _TO LUCAS, FROM DADDY BRENDAN X_.

:::::::

He's on his Xbox when you get home on Friday morning, sat there on the sofa wearing his pyjamas, a dressing gown and a scowl. He glances at you when you walk in, then looks back at the screen and carries on shooting whatever it is that he's aiming to kill, and you get the feeling he'd be happy if the target was you.

"How was Ireland?" he asks, and because he doesn't want to know, you say, "Ireland's still there," and you take off your coat and sit down next to him. He asks if you saw your kids, and when you say yes, he says, "That must've been really nice for you."

"Amy still won't let you see them?"

"Not when I'm with you, no. She thinks you might be a bad influence on them." He drags his eyes away from the television, and looks at you. "Women can be funny like that, can't they."

He turns from you again, back to his game. You feel as if you've swapped one surly teenage boy who hates your guts, for another.

"Said I'd pay for a good lawyer, Steven."

"I don't want your money, Brendan." His voice is rising from the monotone it's been til now; he's angry, and he's not the only one.

"So what _do_ you want?"

"D'you know what, you couldn't even be bothered with a phone call to let me know you're alright. Or, I know this might be pushing it, find out how I was." Now that he's looking at you, you can't look at him.

"Maybe I shouldn't have come back."

"Yeah, maybe you shouldn't."

You watch him as he sits forward and carries on playing. His mind's not on it though, his reflexes have slowed, and after a minute he throws the controller down and mumbles that he's got to go to work. You stay where you are, and you wonder if you're still together, and you listen to him moving from bathroom to kitchen to bedroom, and after a few minutes he comes to the doorway and he says, "I've not been shopping so you'll have to make do with toast. Kettle's boiled anyway." And then he goes out, and you go to the kitchen, and your mug is on the counter next to the kettle. And you think, yes: still together. You just don't know if you should be, because it's you that's keeping his children from him, and their absence is making him hurt.

:::::::

You give it a while, then you call in to the deli on your way to work.

Douglas is in there, serving a customer who happens to be that lad you pulled in Dublin before Steven showed up. The McQueen. You'd heard he was in the neighbourhood, so you knew it was only a matter of time before your paths crossed. He knows you recognise him, and he reminds you of his name. John Paul. Yeah, you knew it was one pope or another.

You know Steven's in here – must be in the back – so you sit down to wait. The two lads are flirting with each other, but they are irrelevant to you and you zone out, because you've got one thing on your mind, this thing that you're going to say to Steven, and his answer to it could change your life.

He appears, and you're on your feet. "What d'you want?" he says, "I'm working." You talk to him quickly, about his kids, and you're vaguely aware of John Paul and Douglas gawping at you, but being seen like this, with your bravado cast aside, is the last thing you care about right now. "If you're not happy with your decision," you say to Steven, "You're the only one that can change it. If you want me to move out, you just say it. I'm not standing in the way of a father and his kids." You're already moving towards the door, because he looks as if he wants to say something, and if it's his answer, you don't want to hear it. Not yet. Not now.

You're glad to get out of the warmth of the deli into the cold air. You're sweating.

:::::::

Kevin's making himself comfortable. You go into your office and there he is, sat behind your desk, feet up on it, cup of tea in his hand, jawing on the work phone.

"Been eating my porridge as well, kid?" you say to him. At least he's got the decency to look embarrassed, but that won't cut it. You tell him to get up, and you reassume your place behind the desk, and you tell him to finish his tea because you've got a big job for him. He disappears, and you give some consideration to what the job will be, and you decide that washing your car might disabuse him of the notion he seems to have got into his head that he's some kind of deputy manager. Sure, the club seems to have got by without you, and he's played his part in that. The stock levels look about right, there's nothing amiss with the books, and the takings have been unremarkable but okay. None of these things makes Kevin Foster your right hand man.

:::::::

You've had no word from Steven, and you've started drinking. Kevin comes into the office again, he's washed your car and he's pissed off about it, and he's managed to get himself soaked in the process.

"Is this your idea of telling me I'm getting too big for my boots?" he asks, and while he's asking, he's stripping off his waterlogged T-shirt.

"This is me telling you that you need to clean my car."

"Cos I'm ready," he says.

_Seriously_? You know what he's saying, but you ask him anyhow: "Ready for what?"

He walks towards you, and he says, all wide-eyed, "Anything you want."

You tell him to come closer, and he leans over the desk, and you tell him, "Put your top back on."

He looks more annoyed than humiliated. He picks up his T-shirt and stomps out, and leaves you wondering what his game is, because something about the way he's been coming on to you, subtly and not so subtly, ever since you hired him, feels wrong. It feels like he's on a mission, and you can't figure out why, and you realise you know next to nothing about him. You need to put that right.

You get your chance later. Kevin's on his break at nine before the long haul til closing time, and he comes into the office asking if he can sit and eat his Chinese. He's persistent, you'll give him that. You tell him yes. This is an opportunity to see if you can find out what he's after, if he's after more than a shag and a promotion; only, you're preoccupied, because you've had a missed call from Steven, and you ought to call him back. Steven's no coward, so you're giving yourself hope, telling yourself that if it was bad news – if he was going to tell you that he needs you to move out – he wouldn't do it over the phone, he'd do it face to face.

Kevin notices you checking your phone, and he tells you he can cope on his own, "If you want to get home to your boyfriend."

You put your phone away, and you tell Kevin to tell you about himself: you know nothing about him, you say, and he jokes to you, he says he's a cop, and your mind goes to Walker. But this boy is not like him. Whatever Kevin is, you're sure he's no policeman. So you ask him something specific.

"Anyone special in your life?"

"Not yet."

"Are you flirting with me, Kevin?"

"Wouldn't dream of it," he says, but his smile says yes. He plays with his food.

You get some cash out of the drawer, drop it on the desk. You tell him it's a bonus for looking after the place while you were away, thinking maybe it will make him show his hand.

He stands up, and he asks if he can be honest, and he tells you he reckons you could do better. Okay. You know what he's talking about, and it's _laughable_, and you make out you've missed his point. "It is what it is," you say, and he says, "No, I'm not talking about the club." He's talking about Steven. "No offence," he says, "But I don't know what you see in him."

He does not get to say that. He doesn't get to compare himself to Steven. Does he think he's better than him, a better man, a more enticing possibility? That you'd want him in your bed, when you've got Steven at home? You hope: you hope you've got Steven at home. If Kevin thinks the offer of a no strings fling with a cute little blond is a more attractive prospect than a lifetime of Steven's moods and baggage and challenges and demands, then he has misunderstood what love is. Jesus, there's no one that compares with Steven, never has been, never will be, not in any way.

You grab Kevin, slam his head down on the desk, hold him down. You can feel his pulse racing, and you can smell his fear, and you think he's got the message that he has offended you. "You make another crack about Steven again, and I will kill you. Do you understand?"

"Yeah. Yeah, I'm sorry."

"That's okay. I think I will get off now, Kevin." You stand up, grinding his head into the desk in the process. "See you tomorrow."

The kid ought to be grateful. Without the change that Steven has wrought in you, he would have been out of a job, and he'd have been picking his teeth up off the floor.

:::::::

You are going home, although you don't know if it's still your home. You need to find that out.

You're just coming out of the alleyway, and suddenly Steven is there. You wait for him to speak, but he doesn't. What he does is, he grabs hold of you round the back of your head, and he pulls you together and he kisses you. His lips are cold when they touch yours, but his tongue is warm, and his mouth is delicious and familiar, and you feel how much you've missed him, and you let him kiss you as long as he wants. You don't touch him, though. You don't hold him. You don't know what this is, and you keep your eyes closed for a moment when he breaks away, because you want to remember this kiss in case it's goodbye. Then he explains.

"That was for the kids' presents. I don't want you to move out, Brendan, right. Y'know, I want you _and_ the kids. Yeah, we can talk to Amy, we'll just sort something out." You look at him, until he says, "Say something, then."

He looks worried, as if he thinks you might leave him anyway; as if he thinks he is the one with everything to lose, when the truth is the opposite.

"Let's go home, Steven."

He smiles at you, and you walk together back to the flat. You listen to his chatter, and you're relieved to hear his voice, because you've had enough of your own company this last week.

When you get home, your bag is on the table where you left it, but unzipped and with Leah and Lucas's presents out beside it. Maybe finding them made the difference between him wanting you to stay or go, but still, you wonder what made him open your bag. For all his apologies over not believing you about those drugs he caught you with, it looks like he still doesn't trust you. He wanted to search through your belongings – for what? You don't know what he's imagining, but you get a sense of foreboding, as if he's slipping away from you in spite of what he says.

He touches your arm and makes you jump. You turn to face him, and you don't know if he's guessed what you're thinking or if he just senses that something's put you on edge, but he frowns and asks, "You okay, Bren?"

His eyes are anxious, and it's because of you, and if he's suspicious of you it's not surprising is it? You've done enough to give him cause, time after time.

You brush your fingers lightly through his hair, and stroke his cheek, and watch his anxiety melt away. He takes your hand in his, turns his head, and you feel his breath on your palm, and his lips as he kisses it, and he closes his eyes and you run your thumb across his lashes and feel the ripple of their soft spikes. Then you take his head in both your hands and you kiss him, and his hands find their way under your jacket and up your back, and you've missed the feeling of his arms around you.

You steer him to the sofa and fall on him, your kiss only breaking as you both start discarding your clothes. Your shirt is unbuttoned, and he kisses your stomach, and you drag his jumper up his back and scratch the exposed skin, then twist and pull him to straddle your lap, and pull his jumper off over his head, and slide your hands down inside the back of his trackies and grab the soft flesh of his arse. He kisses you, his teeth scraping over your moustache, his tongue inside your lip.

By the time you're both naked you've slid onto the floor. You're lying on your sides, face to face, chest to chest, and he's got one leg across you, his ankle at the small of your back, so that the cheeks of his arse are spread as you finger him. He feels tight though even with just one finger, and you say, "You okay?" and he reaches for your hand and brings it to his mouth, and closes his eyes as he starts sucking three of your fingers. You feel his tongue weaving between them, and his teeth closed on them just hard enough to hurt. He opens his eyes suddenly, catching you gazing at him, your mouth open, and he smiles as he puts your hand back where he found it. You feel his cock hardening against you as your wet fingers enter him. He moans. You kiss him. His tongue is lazy now, not responding to yours: he's too wrapped up in the pleasure you're giving him, his pelvis rubbing against you, his ring spasming around your fingers. "Selfish little fucker," you say, and you take your hand away and roll him onto his back, and kneel over him, pinning him down with your hands on his shoulders.

"Fuck me, then," he says, and his hips thrust upwards wanting the friction you're denying him. You laugh, and his eyes darken. "Please," he says.

You grab a cushion from the sofa and he bends his knees and lifts his bum so you can shove the cushion under him. You kneel between his legs and pump him a couple of times til he leaks pre-cum, and you smear it onto your cock, then you position yourself, and push into him, watching his face to see how much of you he wants to take, how much he likes it. His mouth opens, and his shoulders lift off the floor and he reaches up to pull you down to kiss him. You feel his muscles clench around you, and each thrust of your hips sends him skidding, and your head feels light and the room starts to rock, and he takes you deeper, and the inside of him is soft and warm and violent as he forces you to come.

:::::::

You're in bed now. He's lying face down, and you've got a tub of some kind of cream which he's fetched from the bathroom, and you're smoothing it onto the carpet burns on the points of his shoulder blades and all down the ridge of his spine.

"Better?" you ask.

"Not much. It stings."

"You'll live," you say, and give his backside a slap to take his mind off the soreness.

"Ow."

"Want some cream on that too, do you?" You rub a blob of the lotion onto his buttock, and he giggles, and you put the lid on and put it on the bedside cabinet, and lie down again, and he shuffles close, his chest against your side and his arm resting on your belly.

"Brendan?" He's got that _We're gonna have a conversation_ voice on. "Was it okay, you know, seeing your kids?"

"Yeah, it... Look, Steven, if I could swap with you I would, okay? If I could do a deal with God so's giving up seeing my kids meant you got Leah and Lucas back, I'd do it in a heartbeat, but... it don't work like that."

"No, that'd be mad, you miss your kids as much as I miss mine. Don't even say that."

"That's not the point." The point is that Steven's kids need him, but yours are better off without you; you're only fighting to see them because you're selfish.

"So what _is_ the point then?" he asks.

"I dunno. Nothing."

Steven knows when to give up.

"I'm glad you seen them anyway, right." He pauses. "Thanks for getting Leah and Lucas them presents."

"S'okay."

"Did you get me one?"

You could tell him about the padlock that you locked on to the Ha'penny Bridge, but that's not why you did it, it wasn't some romantic gesture to win boyfriend points. The lock wasn't the part that mattered anyhow – the city authorities will likely come along with bolt cutters sooner or later, and all those padlocks will end up in landfill. It's the key that matters: the key will remain, even when your two names together are no longer there to be read. If you told him that, you think it would disturb him.

He's waiting for an answer, and you tilt his chin up and kiss him, and say "No. No present."

"You sure about that?" he says, and his hand is around your cock, and you feel a rush of blood at his touch. You start to push him over onto his back but he resists and you remember his carpet burns, so you let him lie on his stomach again.

The cream is still handy so you use that as lube, stroking it into his crack and across his rim, and over his perineum just because he likes it when you touch him there, but you want him to say it so you ask him, "You like that?" but the _Mm_ you get in reply isn't good enough, so you take your hand away and he turns his head and looks at you, and he says, "Why did you stop?" and you say, "Stop what?" and he says, "Do it again," and you say, "Do what?" and he says, "You know. Touch me, like before." You touch him again, like before, and hear him say into the pillow as the sensation makes him squirm, "Bastard."

When you enter him it's swiftly, and as soon as you're in you roll with him so you're on your sides. You've got one arm around him, your hand flat on his chest. Your other arm is on the pillow, and his head rests on your elbow, and your knees are in the crooks of his knees. The hairs on your chest are sticking to the cream on his back. You hold him against you, and you rock gently into him, and you listen to the sounds he makes to your rhythm. He turns his head to look at you over his shoulder, and you support his head in the bend of your elbow as he kisses you. You can feel his heart beating against your palm.

His hand reaches back and strokes your arse and the back of your thigh, then he feels for your hole and pushes his finger into you. You flinch, and you hope – as you hope each time he does this – that the scar tissue has thinned over the decades, enough that he won't feel it and wonder. You consciously relax, breathing hard against his neck, and you move your hand down from his chest to his cock, and the moment you begin to work it you feel the muscles inside him jerk into life around you, and you hear him say your name, and nothing else matters when you're with him like this. Nothing else exists, only him and you. You bite into his shoulder, harder and harder until he cries out again, "Brendan."


	13. Chapter 13

"What time is it?"

Steven's voice is slurred with sleep.

He rolls over to face you. It's too dark to see him properly, but you can feel him looking at you, and you can feel the warmth coming off him.

"Didn't mean to wake you," you say. You didn't have a bath when you got home because the water running through the pipes seems to sound ten times louder at this time of night, and you climbed into bed carefully without nicking the cover so you wouldn't disturb him. "Go back to sleep."

"You only just got in?"

"Saturday, ain't it. Club's always later."

You're exhausted. Yesterday you were at the airport at some insane time in the morning for your flight home from Dublin, then you had a long day at work, then you were awake half the night making up for lost time with Steven. Today you were at work for fourteen hours.

"Was he on with you tonight, that Kevin?"

"What? Yeah. Why d'you ask?"

"No reason."

"Steven."

"Just thought he was a bit funny today, that's all. You know, when he walked in on us."

Steven had called in to see you at the club when he finished work today, and you went into the office together for a bit of one-on-one. Kevin came in, copped an eyeful of you with your tongue down your boyfriend's throat, and told you he needed you to mind the bar while he restocked the fridge. You told him to get lost, and he slammed the door on you and left you to it. The kid's got a problem, you reckon: you know what he thinks of Steven after you knocked back his attempt to – what's the word? – _seduce_ you yesterday.

"Yeah, well, he's a funny lad." No point telling Steven about Kevin's _No offence – I think you can do better_ routine.

"Only, them fridges didn't need restocking, I had a look."

"Forget about it."

"I reckon he fancies you, Brendan."

"What? No. So what if he does?"

"So, do you fancy him?"

Jesus.

"Seriously? Where's this come from, Steven?"

"Do you, though? I mean, he's a barman, I was a barman. That Vinnie one, he was a barman weren't he?"

How long is it since either of you has mentioned Vincent? Years, must be. You didn't think Steven would remember what the boy's name was, let alone his job.

"Steven, can you... can we just get some sleep, please?"

"I'm just saying."

Your eyes are adjusting to the dark now, but you'd know he was pouting even if you couldn't see him.

"Yeah, well, don't. Jesus."

He sighs, then he's quiet for a minute. And then: "What was he like?"

"What? Who? What was who like?"

"That Vinnie."

"Will you leave it now, Steven, please."

"Just tell me."

"Fucksake. He... What d'you want me to say? Okay, five foot eight, green eyes, blond h– "

"See!"

"What?"

"He's blond, Kevin's blond, I'm blond... sort of. You can't tell me you don't fancy Kevin, right, cos I don't believe you."

You sit up in the bed, and run your hands through your hair. You can feel your temper fraying.

"Steven, you've spent eight hours today with your _husband_. D'you think I'm okay with that? You think I don't worry all the time that you're gonna think the grass is greener, hm? But I... I've got to trust you, or what's the point?"

"I don't even fancy Doug though. I chose you, didn't I?"

"You married him, instead of..."

"Instead of what?"

"Instead of not marrying him."

"Right. Anyway, Brendan, you had all them blokes, you had _John Paul McQueen_, so you can't – "

"I'm going to sleep." You lie back down, your head thumping onto the pillow, and you shut your eyes.

After a minute or two, Steven breaks the silence.

"I had a fight with him. When you was away."

"Who?" You prop yourself up on your elbow. "Who'd you have a fight with?"

"Him: John Paul."

"About me?" You're half concerned, half amused.

"Don't flatter yourself. We went up my old school, me and Doug – well, it's this poncy college now, innit, and we had to do this talk about the deli, right, for the kids. And John Paul was making a right show of me, looking down his nose like he reckons he's better than me, and I just lost it after, and we had this fight in the corridor."

"Serious?"

"Yeah! And the head came along, and he's a right toffee-nosed git, and he had a right go at us like we was kids, but I reckon John Paul got in proper trouble, right, cos he's a teacher, and you can't have fights in the corridor if you're a teacher."

"I go away for a week, and you're getting into fights. Remind me not to leave you on your own again."

"Weren't my fault, he started it."

"So it was nothing to do with me, then? Because I... you know, met him before in Dublin."

"No. As if."

"No. Okay." You're looking at Steven's face, and he's frowning. "He's not, by the way."

"Who's not what?" he asks.

"The McQueen. He ain't better than you. No one is, okay?"

"So you don't still fancy him. Or Kevin. Or – "

"Steven." You can't believe he thinks you would touch another man now that you're with him. "Steven, why would I go out for a hamburger, when I've got steak at home?"

"What you even on about now?"

"It's a saying, you know, it means, why would you go and get something cheap if you've already got something... rare."

"Oh." He pauses, and you can almost hear the wheels turn, then he gets it. "Oh. Right." He's quiet for a moment. "Brendan, I weren't having a go at you, right, it's just, you know, you been away for a week, then the day after you come back, I'm at work all day and you're at work half the night, and I never see you, do I? I missed you, that's all."

You reach out your arm and he cuddles up.

"Sunday tomorrow. You ain't working, no?"

"No."

"Okay, me neither. We'll... we got the whole day, just you and me, okay?"

"Okay."

"Starting with a lie-in though, yeah?" You kiss his hair. "Night, Steven."

"Night." It's a couple of minutes before he speaks again. "Did you make it up, that saying?"

"Hm?"

"That thing you said, about burgers and steaks."

"No, no it's... it was Paul Newman said it, I think."

"Who?"

"_Who_?" Jesus, have twenty-three-year-olds not heard of Paul Newman? "You know, _Cool Hand Luke. The Sting. _He was Butch Cassidy, yeah? _Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid._"

"Oh yeah, I've heard of that."

"Heard of it? You ain't seen it? It's a classic."

"Before my time, innit."

"It's before my time, too, Steven. Nineteen sixty-nine, it was made, but I still seen it."

"That's well old," he says, then he laughs softly. "I didn't know you was a geek."

"Fuck off, I ain't a geek. I just know, don't I, I just... It's general knowledge. I ain't a _geek_."

You feel well old.

He thinks for a minute, and so do you. Then he says, "So I'm the steak?"

"Hm? Yeah, you're the steak."

"Who was the steak when Paul Newman said it, then? The Sundance Kid?"

"No, it was – " You stop yourself saying, _his wife_, and you say, "I dunno," and you lean and kiss him, and then you say, "Maybe it was," and his mouth softens and opens when you kiss him again. "Maybe it was Sundance."

You really need to get to sleep. You tuck his head under your chin, and hope he gets the message; he kisses your chest for a minute, but when you don't respond he gives up, and you start to drift off.

"Brendan? You still awake?"

"No."

"That film. What year did you say it come out?"

"Nineteen sixty-nine. Now can we please just – "

"Nineteen what?"

"Sixty-nine."

"Sixty-nine?" He's looking at you now, smiling: you can see his teeth gleaming.

"Sixty-nine," you say.

Sleep can wait.

You get out of bed, pull the cover off him. Get him by the ankles and pull him half way down the bed. Switch on the bedside lamp. Strip off your T-shirt and boxers, while he wriggles out of his boxers. He's wearing a sleeveless vest, and he doesn't take it off, just pulls it up so his stomach's bare, his fingers splayed over it. He's got a semi.

You get onto the bed above his head, and crawl down over his body. When your cock is over his face, he catches it in his hands. You plant your hands on the mattress either side of his hips, your arms taking your weight, and lower yourself til you can close your mouth over his erection.

You feel his tongue on you; his fists grip and stroke, and you move your mouth on him in time with what he's doing to you, so his tip glides back and forth along the roof of your mouth. He starts taking you in deeper, his hands moving to grasp your balls. His lips seal around you, and he starts sucking hard. You mimic him, arching your neck to open your throat. You can feel the ridge of his foreskin on your tongue. You can feel him growing. You're breathing hard through your nose. You feel a dribble of saliva escape the corner of your mouth.

He's getting vocal now, the noise he makes vibrating through you so you feel it as much as hear it. It makes your toes curl.

He starts moving his pelvis up off the bed, thrusting his cock into your mouth so you have to jerk your head away or you'll gag. You retaliate in kind, and your dick hits the back of his throat when he's not ready. He yanks it out, coughs and splutters theatrically – like he can't take it - then when he angles you into his mouth again you feel his teeth, and you take that as a warning, and you let him control how far and how fast. His hands move to your waist.

You concentrate now on what you're doing to him, not what he's doing to you, because you want to make him come first – and you do, and the taste of him floods your mouth, viscous and vivid on the back of your tongue.

You extract yourself from him, get off him and sit up; you bring his head into your lap so he can finish the job, your fingers meshed in his hair as his hands and mouth work together til you come. You hear yourself, and you think you must sound like an animal to him with your grunting and roaring, and maybe he was right when he called you an animal once. You wonder what he thinks about that, about you. Does it worry him how close to the surface the animal lives in you? Does it scare him?

You pull his head up by his hair so you can watch him swallow. He holds your gaze, licks his lips, and smiles as if he knows you'd fight a monster if he asked you to. Then he's down again, licking you clean.

"Jesus, Steven. Fuck." You lift his face in both your hands and kiss him, and the taste of his cum and yours washes between you, from tongue to tongue.

You retrieve the cover from the floor and drag it over you both, and you fall asleep together in the middle of the bed.

:::::::

You are in the supermarket. This is what you are doing today, on your day off; this is what couples do on a Sunday, apparently.

He's told you you can't make do with picking stuff up in Price Slice each day, it's too expensive; and he hasn't got time to go into town on the bus every week, so this morning you've gone in the car, and you're pushing the trolley up and down every fucking aisle while he darts off grabbing things to put in it. Okay then.

He vetoes the pack of donuts you've dropped into the trolley. "They're fattening, them," he says, and slaps your belly, and you tell him, "That ain't fat, that's muscle," and he says, "Yeah it is now, but trust me, you'll thank me when you're forty." He'll be thirty then, and you wonder if he'll still be a skinny little bastard.

At the checkout, he tuts at you when you pack the bananas in the same bag as the frozen, so you stand back and let him do it.

He wants to go halves when it comes to paying, but you don't let him. So what if the checkout woman thinks he's a kept man?

You load all the shopping back into the trolley to take to the car, then he says he's just got to run to another shop and he'll see you in a minute, and before you can argue with him he's headed for the exit.

You watch him go. He's in a tracksuit.

:::::::

You reward yourselves after you take the shopping home, with a couple of drinks in the Dog, and being out with him is fine. Better than fine: it feels _normal_, everyone knowing you're together, and normal is better than fine. Only, sometime during your second drink, Seamus comes into the pub, and walks over to where you and Steven are standing at the bar, and puts his hand on your shoulder, and says, "Mind if I join you, son?" You shrug him off so then he looks past you, "You won't mind, will you, Steven? My round." And you need Steven to back you up but when you turn to him, you see that he's in two minds, he might just as easily say yes to a drink from Seamus as no.

"We're just going," you say to your dad, and he asks Steven, "You always let him tell you what to do, do you?" and he smiles as he asks it. Divide and rule, that's what he's trying, like he used to do with you and Cheryl or Cheryl and her mum.

You wait for Steven to make his choice. This matters.

"Let's go home, Brendan."

:::::::

"Right, I'm gonna cook our tea," he says. "You can help if you want."

"I hate cooking." Running into your dad has cast a shadow, and you're on the edge of a bad mood.

"Alright, grumpy. You can watch me then, and when it's ready, we're gonna watch this." He picks up a plastic bag from where he'd left it on the kitchen counter after you got back from shopping, and hands it to you. There's a dvd inside, and you take it out. It's _Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid_, and Steven is grinning at you.

You smile back. You let him shine his light into you, and you know there are dark corners that he can't reach, but you want to believe that you can live with that, and that he can too.

"You got it all planned out," you say to him.

"Yeah. And after we've watched the film," he says, and he trails his fingers down your cheek and half closes his eyes, and tells you in an accent that you guess is meant to be French, "We're going to make _lurve_."

"Oh yeah? And what might that entail?"

"You know." He looks bashful.

"Tell me." You're enjoying his embarrassment now.

"I dunno. Romantic," he mumbles. "Gentle."

You kiss him softly.

"I can do gentle."

:::::::

"Is that the end?"

"Yeah. Did you like it?"

"Yeah, it was good, but..."

"But what? Steven?"

"They got shot. I thought they was gonna think of something, you know, like, Butch was gonna think of a plan."

"They're criminals, I guess they had to run out of luck in the end."

"They weren't, like, proper baddies though. And they tried to go straight, didn't they, and they would've done it if them blokes hadn't attacked them. I wish it had a happy ending."

"It's a true story though, Steven. Most of it, anyways. You can't just stick on a happy ending, life ain't like that, so."

He looks at you; his eyes are full of concern.

"Sometimes it is," he says. He looks very young.

You try to come up with something to make him feel better.

"It kinda was, for them. Out in a hail of bullets, better than rotting in jail." It doesn't sound so reassuring when you say it out loud.

"You call that a happy ending?"

"For men like that? Yeah."

"You're well weird, you."

You get up from the couch and hold your hand out to him; he takes it, and you pull him to his feet and into your arms.

"Thanks for getting the film," you say to him, and you hold him very tight.

:::::::

There's a tiny scar at the corner of Steven's mouth.

You hold his chin, and you kiss the scar. Then you turn his head to one side on the pillow, gently, and on his cheek just below his cheekbone, there's a mole. You touch it with your tongue, then kiss it, then you kiss the mole that's on his neck a couple of inches below his ear. There's another mole on the other side of his neck but a little lower: you turn his head to face the other way, and brush that mole with your lips.

He laughs softly, and asks, "What you doing?"

"Ssh. I'm being gentle."

It's dark and you can barely see him, so you find these marks on him by memory, and by the feel of them as you run your palm slowly over him, where they're almost undetectably raised against the skin on which they're dotted.

You follow the ridge of his collarbone across his chest with your tongue, move down a little and find the mole that's there, and kiss it. You suck lightly on his nipple, and then on the other, and then find with your lips the mole on his flank, and then scrape your teeth over the tattoo on his hip bone.

There's another mole hidden in the soft hairs above his cock. You breathe on it hotly, and he shifts on the bed. You stroke down his thigh, and his shin, and you feel the hairs there stand on end.

You turn him over, and kiss the soles of his feet, one then the other, and you hear him stifling his giggles in the pillow – you know how ticklish he is, and you thought he'd decide enough was enough then, but he doesn't.

There's a mole in the crease where his buttock meets his thigh, and you bite it gently; the one at the base of his spine gets a lick, and the one on his shoulder blade you kiss. You smooth your hands along his arms from shoulders to wrists, then press his hands into the pillows either side of his head, and you lie on his back and, at the nape of his neck, just below the hairline and a little to the left, there's a mole that you give a kiss to.

You lie there until you realise that he's struggling to breathe under your weight. Asphyxiation probably wasn't what he had in mind when he said he wanted to _make love_, so you move off him.

He lies on his side and strokes your face, and kisses you: kiss after kiss, on your mouth, along your jaw, your neck. You reach to the bedside cabinet for the lube; show it to him, and he nods, lies back, spreads his legs. You smile, but you don't think he sees, and it's probably just as well he doesn't, in case he thinks you're laughing at him. You're not. You're amazed by him, is all.

His features are indistinct in the darkness of the bedroom, but you can see his eyes shining and his mouth opening as you ease into him. You take it slowly, even when his muscles are fighting to draw you in, so when you're filling him it's all the sweeter. You feel him shiver, and his legs grip your back more tightly, and he's incoherent, "That's... can't... God... you're..." and then the words go completely and it's just sounds he's making, cries and moans, and hearing him is sending you to the edge, and you can't go slowly any more.

He forces his hand between your bodies and grabs his cock, and you manage – just – to hold off until he's almost there, and you come together, and you think for a moment that the light's been switched on, but it hasn't, it's inside your head.

You roll off him and you lie face to face, breathing hard into each other's mouths. He slides his leg over you and pulls himself against you. You reach around him, go in with your fingers and keep him warmed up till you're ready to make love to him again, or to fuck him, or however he wants it this time. Anything he wants.

:::::::

He's not there when you wake up. You pick your watch up from the bedside cabinet: it's just gone eight. You get up and put your dressing gown on – yours or his? You're not even sure any more, but it makes no odds – and you follow the smell of toast.

He's in the kitchen, standing at the sink doing last night's washing-up. He has on a shirt of yours, the white one you wore for work yesterday and dropped on the bedroom floor when you got undressed last night. It hangs on him loosely, his narrow shoulders not reaching its shoulder seams, its sleeves too long and pushed up to his elbows. The shirt is all he's wearing, as far as you can see.

He hears you come in, and he turns his head to glance at you briefly, and says, "Morning. I've made the toast."

He's shy in the mornings. It's funny.

You go to him, wrap your arms around him from behind, kiss his neck, breathe him in. He smells new.

"Am I dreaming?" you ask into his hair.

"Why?"

You don't know where to start, so you say, "This."

"It's only a bit of toast."

"I ain't talking about the breakfast."

"What you talking about, then?" He dries his hands and turns around in your arms to face you.

You don't know if he's angling for compliments, or if he really doesn't know, so you tell him. You tell him some of it, anyhow.

"I'm talking about you, barefoot in the kitchen," you say, and you run your hands down his back and confirm that he's not wearing any boxers. "Jesus, Steven, you're like a... like a fantasy boyfriend."

He looks at you as if he thinks you're insane, and he laughs that weird laugh of his.

"Fantasy?" he says, and you think he genuinely doesn't get that you mean it.

"Yeah. Not the laugh, obviously."

"Shut up."

He's got to get to work, but you're going to make him late.

You unbutton his – your – shirt. He tells you he hasn't got time, but it doesn't take long to drag him from kitchen to bedroom, to shove him onto the bed. He lands on his back then sits up to start to slip the shirt off, but you tell him, "Keep it on." He lies back and you slick him with lube, lift his legs onto your shoulders. He's spent half the night with your dick inside him, so you're in him easily, and as you fuck him you look down at him, his arms stretched out above his head, his hands clenching into fists, his head thrown back so the skin of his neck stretches taut over the sharp triangle of his Adam's apple.

You jerk him off with your hand, and when he comes, the shudder in his body finishes you off too.

You ease his legs off your shoulders, and he pulls you into a kiss; you push the shirt off his shoulder, and kiss his bared skin.

He leaves you in bed, and goes and cleans himself up, then he comes back into the bedroom and you lie there watching him get dressed. He's in a big hurry now.

"What time you going to work?" he asks.

"Dunno. Not yet though."

"Alright for some." He's heading out the door, then he stops and says, "He didn't say it, did he?"

"Mm?"

"Paul Newman. In the film. He didn't say the steak thing."

"I love you, Steven," you say.

:::::::

You're feeling mellow.

Kevin hasn't given up on whatever it is he's after from you. It surprises you when he suggests you have a drink together after work – didn't you make it crystal clear on Friday night that you weren't interested? – but it doesn't faze you. You and Steven, you're solid, and it would take more than this kid to change that.

Steven comes up the stairs just as Kevin's saying about a drink.

He's got flour all over him, his clothes, his face, in his hair. You call him Casper: he doesn't laugh, just gives Kevin a look. He's come to tell you he's got a last minute catering job on, and since Douglas has got the night off, Steven's going to have to pull an all-nighter.

Kevin says to you, "Looks like you're free for a drink after work then."

Unbelievable.

"Have a beer for me," Steven says, and he turns to go.

"Steven." You go to him. "How about I give you a hand?"

"You hate cooking."

You tell him maybe you want to expand your repertoire.

Kevin objects, asks how he's meant to manage on his own; you throw a bit of sarcasm at him, and then he asks you if he's in charge for the night.

"I'm the boss. I'm always in charge, whether I'm here or not. See ya."

Steven looks pleased as punch as you walk out of the club and over to the deli. Good: he wasn't happy this morning, you got a call from him when he got to work saying there'd been a parcel delivered just as he was leaving home, and what was in it was some new clothes he'd sent Amy for Lucas. He was upset, and you tried to talk him down – you told him maybe the clothes just didn't fit – and you asked if he wanted you to drop by the deli to see him, but he said he was okay. After the weekend you'd spent together, it was down to earth with a crash, and you could kill Amy.

Figure of speech.

You're glad he's over it now, so.

The deli is closed, it's just the two of you, and he puts you to work. You see pretty quickly that you're getting the junior jobs, the ones that can't be mucked up, and while you're stirring and slicing and fetching and carrying, you watch him. He's dextrous, concentrated, confident. When he's doing something delicate, his tongue peeps out between his lips; when he finishes a task to his satisfaction, he nods and smiles to himself almost imperceptibly. Between jobs, you see him running though a mental checklist.

You're proud of him.

When he checks up on you, it's gently: gently taking the piss sometimes, but he's a good teacher. You try his patience eventually though. You're making bread now, and you've got a lump of dough on the board, and you remember hearing once that you can use up your anger when you're making bread, you can be rough as you like with it. Was it your nana said that? Anyhow, you're not angry now, but you're applying that technique, and Steven's got different ideas.

"You're s'posed to knead it, right, not start a fight with it."

"I am kneading it. I don't tell you how to decorate your tarts – let me do my thing." You resume punching the dough.

"It's not your enemy. Right, watch." He puts his hands on yours, makes you roll your knuckles over the dough. "Gentle. See?"

"Yes." You can do gentle.

"You could always go and have a drink with Kevin if you'd rather."

"No, this is what I wanna do with my life," you tell him. "Bake bread with my gay lover."

"Really?" He sounds as if he wants it to be true, and when you don't answer, he's a little deflated: "Course not."

He asks you how you expected your life would go, and here in the quiet and the warmth, the intimacy of this moment here together, you tell him the truth.

"Sometimes I'm surprised I'm still alive, to be honest."

"Yeah, there's a cheery thought," he says, and he's mocking you, and he stops you falling into the darkness that you're always on the brink of. "At least you're not dead."

You smile, and you try to put your thoughts into words so he'll understand what this means; what _he_ means.

"This, you know... I never pictured this. But I'm okay with it." You look at him then, search his face trying to see if he gets it, if he gets all of it, what you're saying, and what you can't say because you're not there yet; and trying to see if he shares it.

"Me too."

"Yeah?" You can't believe your luck as he looks at you, nods his head, smiles. You say to him, "Good."

:::::::

You've been working a few hours now. Something about the shared activity makes talking easy, and you've been able to talk about the kids a bit, his and yours, your hopes for them, your fears. Happiness is what you both want for all of them. Staying out of trouble is what you also want for yours – something that hasn't occurred to him to worry about for his, but then his haven't had you as a dad for long enough to send them into worlds they're better off out of. You're going to make sure you're a better father to Leah and Lucas then you've been so far to your boys. You tell Steven about how you got on last week in Dublin – he wants to know – and he gives you hope that it was a step in the right direction.

You slide another batch of bread into the oven, then you turn to Steven. You've got something to say to him, something you've been rehearsing in your head as you worked.

"So, what's next?"

"Now," he says, "We clean up the mess."

"No. No, I mean, what's next... for us? I mean, we just baked bread together. It feels... momentous."

You feel exposed, vulnerable. He has your life in his hands, and there's no one else who's ever had you like that. Like this.

"Does it?" he says.

"Doesn't it?" You need to explain: he wants you to, you can see it in the way he's looking at you. You tell him, all the things that have made it hard between you have been your fault. His instinct then is to touch you, kiss you maybe, but you stop him because you've got to say this. "I just want you to... I want you to know that I'm gonna be there for you, to help you get your kids back."

"Yeah, and once Amy knows that you've really changed – "

"I have changed."

"...Everything's gonna be alright."

"I have changed, you know? You, me, Leah, Lucas, it's... We're gonna be a proper family, and I'm gonna give you the future you deserve, alright? I have changed." You've changed, haven't you? You've got to have changed, or all this will slip through your fingers, and it – he – is all you've got that's worth having. You've changed.

"I know." He thinks you're being weird, doesn't he, or sentimental? But you think he loves you anyhow, and you say, "Come here," and you kiss him, and then because you want to be back on safe ground, and because he'll feel safe that way too, you say, "Sorry, one last thing is... is this," and you pick up a big pinch of flour and flick it into his face. Right in the eye.

You run for it, and he's after you, and he's laughing and he chucks a handful of flour over you, and it's going everywhere. You catch him, kiss him, and plant white handprints on his arse, and he tries to get flour in your hair but you won't have that. You fight him and he pinches you, and you get a few slaps in, sending flour clouding off his backside.

You get back to work: one more kiss, and then you're on clearing-up duty.

:::::::

It's getting late now, but if you have to spend a few more hours here, you're fine with that.

He's still working away, still delegating the menial tasks. You're standing by the oven, watching him kneading more dough, listening to him chattering on about anything that comes into his head. You remember telling him once that he talked too much, and you meant it then, you think: back then, you were scared of the things he said, how he made assumptions about your relationship when a relationship was something you couldn't imagine; how he seemed to see the possibility of beginnings, when you only saw things having to end.

What he's talking about now is how he's ended up here. "Little scally Ste," he says, "Making good."

"Are you drunk?"

"I'm happy," he says. Then he says he's sorry for talking non-stop. "Want me to stop, shut up?"

"No. No, don't stop. I like it... It calms me down." _He_ does. Having him in your life calms you down. He looks at you then, and you don't know how to interpret his look, so you ask, "What?"

He looks away before he answers, "Like an old married couple, aren't we."

"Wouldn't be so bad,"

Maybe it's being in here, locked away from the world, with him in the warmth and the light when it's cold and dark outside: maybe that's why you can say it, and it feels possible, and it doesn't make you afraid.

"Aww," he says, and comes to you.

Then your phone rings, and it's Kevin. Got to be kidding. He's calling from the club, and he's full of apologies but he needs you back there, because there's a pipe burst behind the bar.

"Minor emergency at the club," you say to Steven. "Won't be long."

You kiss him, and you unlock the door and go outside, and shiver as the cold air surrounds you.

Before you go into the club, you look back and see Steven in the glowing light of the deli. You won't be long, because the sooner you get back to him, the sooner you'll get him home.


	14. Chapter 14

There's something wrong.

You're having a nightmare. You're running, but it's dark and you're running blind. You're running from someone, you can feel their breath on the back of your neck. Someone's running from you, and if you could catch them you could tell them that they don't have to run, but you can't catch them because you've been running for so long that you're exhausted, and you can't escape because you've been running for so long that you're exhausted. There's someone in the darkness. There's someone in the doorway.

Your terror wakes you, and there's something wrong, because you don't have nightmares any more, not when you've been sleeping every night with Steven. You turn over, and there's a space beside you in the bed, and you touch the space and it's cold. You pick up your watch and peer at it: it's just after four.

It wasn't your terror that woke you, it was the front door opening and closing. You remember the sound now as your heartbeat slows, and you listen to the noises of water running, the toilet flushing.

He opens the bedroom door, and you sit up.

"You're here, then," he says.

"Where else would I be?"

"You tell me."

"What?" you ask.

_What_?

And then you remember what. _Kevin_.

You left Steven in the deli. It was gettinglate. "Won't be long," you'd said to him, and as you reached the door of the club you looked back at him: he was framed in the brightly lit window, and you had to tear yourself away from staring at him.

Kevin had phoned you saying some pipe had burst behind the bar upstairs, and when you got there the floor was wet and you quickly closed off the tap. That would do til tomorrow when you would have a proper look at it. You told him to clean up the mess, and you started to head off back to Steven but before you even reached the stairs, you heard a glass smash and a cry of pain, and you turned around to find that Kevin had cut himself. You picked up a cloth and went and had a look at him, and picked a piece of glass out of the side of his hand. What was the matter with him? You asked him, and he told you that someone in his family had died today, of cancer.

You held the cloth on his wound to stop the bleeding.

It was his uncle Robert. Kevin said he knew a whole lot of guys like his uncle and he could handle them all, no problem, but not him: he was scared of him, and there was something in the way the kid spoke about him that made you pay attention. "He always stank of tobacco," he said, and your stomach clenched at the detail, and you dropped his hand because if you were right about this, an unasked for touch would feel like an invasion to him. You stepped back from him and you asked, "Why? Why were you scared of him, Kevin?" He couldn't say it – course he couldn't – so you asked, "Did he used to thump you?" and when he said no, you said, "He used to tell you that you were special?" and when Kevin asked if you had to get going, you said, "I ain't going anywhere."

It made sense of him throwing himself at you, didn't it? That he didn't think he was worth shit, that he thought he had to do that because that was what he learned from his uncle.

You cleared up the broken glass, and he mopped the floor, and you kept an eye on him as a few punters drifted up and he served them. He was on edge, you could see that, but you had somewhere you needed to be, so you gave it maybe half an hour and then you judged that Kevin could cope on his own, and you said to him, "I'm getting off now, okay?"

"He abused me." He came out with it in a rush, soon as you said you were going. "My uncle Robert, when I was a kid, he abused me."

You stopped: you had to. You asked him if he wanted to talk about it. No one asked you, did they, because no one saw it in you or if they did, they turned a blind eye; but you had the chance here to do a good thing, the right thing, be the better man that Steven has made you.

Kevin nodded. "Not here though," he said, so you called someone up from downstairs to man the bar, and you took him into the office, sat him down, shut the door and let him talk.

He asked you why it wouldn't go away, this stuff that happened to him years ago. "No matter how far I go," he said, "I can't lose the image of him appearing in the doorway, standing over me, the smell of his breath."

You felt sick.

You sat down with him, and he told you he'd never told this to anyone before. You felt a weight of responsibility on you, and you searched for something you could say to him that wasn't, _This happened to me too, and it made me a monster._ You remembered a trick you'd tried sometimes. "It helps," you told him, "To have a conversation with him. In your head, you know? Say everything you would say, if you were stronger... if you were different. It helps." You didn't tell him that the sense of control that this imaginary conversation would give him would be illusory, that it would last only until the next memory got through his defences and made him a child again.

He asked you not to tell. "I won't," you told him, and you knew the fear that must haunt him, of discovery and judgement and pity.

You left the club with him. He thanked you, and you said it was nothing, but he said it was everything to him, and he flung his arms around your neck as if he thought something had changed between you. Jesus. You stopped him. He got the message, looked apologetic and sloped off.

You looked across at the deli and Steven was there outside, and you went straight to him to say sorry for taking longer than you'd said you would.

"It's fine," he said, meaning it was anything but. "You obviously had something better to do."

"What, that?" Did he think you and Kevin were – ? It was laughable. "You don't have to worry about _that_, Steven, come on."

"I'm not worried about it. We've sorted it." He started to go back into the deli.

"I'm sorry."

"Forget about it." He went inside and shut the door.

Fuck. You'd tried to do the right thing and all you'd done was fuck things up with Steven. You felt yourself getting angry, so you walked away. You went back to the club to grab a bottle of whiskey, and then you went home and drank and watched the clock, and when you were too pissed to drink any more, you felt your way to bed. And now you've woken up, and it's four in the morning, and Steven has just come home.

"You're here, then," he says.

"Where else would I be?"

"You tell me."

"What?" And you remember it all, and you try to focus on Steven as he stands looking at you.

"All I know is," he says, "You were with me, and then you were with him."

You can't tell him why you took so long at the club: you could tell him Kevin was upset because his uncle had died, but you're not lying to Steven any more, and in any case he wouldn't believe that you'd taken all that time to offer your sympathies. You can't tell him what Kevin confided to you, and even if you did, you couldn't tell him why it compelled you to stay. So you say to him, "Fucksake, Steven, you're being ridiculous," and you lie back and shut your eyes, and when you feel the mattress dip as he gets into bed, you turn your back on him, just like he shut the door on you.

When you wake up again, he's gone again. It's half seven, and you get up and look for him, but he must have gone back to the deli to finish this rush job that he's been working on single handed since you left him in the lurch last night. You wonder if he got any sleep at all.

You try phoning him, but he doesn't answer. You swallow a couple of painkillers, and go back to bed to sleep off your headache.

:::::::

He's still not answering your calls. It kills you, knowing that after all the things you said to each other when you were baking bread together last night, his faith in you is so easily shaken. You need to see him, sort this out.

He's outside the deli cleaning the windows when you get into the village.

"Alright?" you say to him; you need to gauge his mood.

"So," he says, "Are you gonna tell me why you sacked me off last night, then?"

You're honest, to a point. You tell him that Kevin had needed someone to talk to, which is some of the truth. Wrong thing to say, though, obviously. Steven's been doing some thinking, by the looks of it, and he tells you that ever since Amy went off with the kids, you've been distant with him, "And then last night, stupid old me, I finally thought we was getting somewhere."

"Well, we are." All of that last night, it was real, it was progress, he's got to see that.

"No, I've been up all night, working by myself, Brendan, thanks to you." He looks straight at you, and he's wounded. You've wounded him, again.

"Why don't you go home?" you offer, even though you feel like a wreck, and he looks like he's had eight hours' sleep, and so beautiful he makes your heart hurt. You tell him you'll look after the deli for him.

"What if Kevin suddenly needs you again? I just wouldn't be able to live with myself." He goes inside.

His sarcasm stings you.

"Ah, there you are." It's your dad, behind you – has he been listening, watching you? "The first dead cert of the day: you, stuffing things up with that shiny boy of yours." He comes near you and looks in the deli window, and you feel bile rise in your throat knowing that your dad's eyes are on your lover. "Eileen, boys, your whole family," he says. "You always push away those closest to you, don't you?"

You don't let him see that he's hit upon one of your greatest fears. You turn and walk away from him, looking back before you go inside the club just to check that Seamus has walked away too and hasn't gone into the deli.

You hate that your dad is right.

:::::::

You can't shake Kevin off today.

It's not his fault, you guess, that Steven doesn't trust you, but as soon as he gets in to work you're on edge. He wants to be pals, and you wonder what you've started: you've had lads clinging to you before – Macca was like that, and Vincent too in a way – but at least their claim on you was based on something real that had happened between you, and not just a notion in their heads. You're starting to think that maybe you've given too much away, never mind the wedge that's been put between you and Steven; you need to nip this in the bud, and so you blank Kevin, shut yourself in the office with whiskey and your thoughts for company.

He's not put off, though. He comes in, saying the tills have run out of change, and while you're sorting it out for him he starts again, telling you how he used to dream about his uncle coming into his room at night. Then he offers to buy you a drink. "We could toast to my uncle Roger," he says, "Well, him being dead."

You're a fucking fool. You don't know what this boy is, but he's not what he pretends to be, and he's got something on you and you don't know how, and this is what happens when you take down your walls.

"Tell me, Kevin, what did he die of again?"

"It was a heart attack, I think."

You can smell his panic.

"Thought his name was Robert." You point out the holes in his story, and he squirms but he fronts it out.

"Yeah, you're right," he says. "I'm just nervous."

You tell him it's okay, and you turn away because you need to think about this. Kevin doesn't take his chance to walk away though. He tells you he didn't come in here to offer to buy you a drink, and you turn back to him and ask him why he's here, then, and he steps towards you like he thinks you want him.

You slam him back against the open door. Your fingers turn his skin white as they press into his face, but you keep your anger in check, and you say to him, "The question is, why did you lie to me about that? Why?"

"It happened, I swear it."

"But why that story? Enlighten me, Kevin, huh?"

"Brendan." Seamus is there, and he's smiling at you like he's seen you for what he thinks you are. "Let him go."

You do as your father says.

"I see you again," you tell Kevin, "I'll kill you. Go." And the kid runs.

"What got into you?" Seamus asks.

It's him, isn't it? He's the only one who knows, apart from Simon Walker.

"Did... did you tell him?" you ask your dad. "Did you?"

"Tell him what?" he asks, and he steps towards you in the doorway, and his hand comes up like he wants to touch you, and you evade him, cringe away from him, and you tell him not to ever touch you, and you get out past him and out of the club because you can't breathe in there.

You hear Steven call your name after you pass the deli, but you don't look back.

:::::::

You've been walking for a while, and thinking, and now you're in the park, and you're sitting on a bench with a cup of coffee which is warming your hands. You've sat on this bench before: you remember it now, it was where you waited with Macca for the ambulance to arrive after you half killed him. You remember leaving him here soon as you heard the sirens, running out of sight like the coward you were, away from the mess you'd made.

You think maybe you're being paranoid about Kevin. Why would your dad let some kid in on your secret? Would he risk someone knowing what he did to you, just to hurt you some more? Maybe Kevin was telling the truth and it really was just his nervousness that made him get the facts mixed up; because a thing like that, you don't say, do you, if it's not true? Not if you don't want to be seen as weak, degraded. All your instincts are telling you now that he was lying, but you can't be sure, and if you try to beat it out of him, all you'll do is send Steven running, and you can't do that because without him you're lost.

The way your dad looked at you though, when he caught you with Kevin: like he recognised you. You had that boy shitting himself, too small to fight back, too scared to try and run, and your dad looked at you and recognised what he saw.

You find yourself asking a question: are you going to keep going along the road your old man set you on, even now that you've had a glimpse of a different way ahead?

_Do not hasten in your spirit to be angry, for anger rests in the bosom of fools._

You're exhausted. You think back to last night, the hours you spent working side by side with Steven, looking forward not back. You've changed. You have – you _have_ changed.

You finish your coffee, and you head for the path back to the village. You're going to find Steven, and you're going to kiss him, and you're going to make him see that you're trying to deserve him. It crosses your mind that he might taste in your mouth the three sugars you had in your coffee, and give you a hard time about it; the thought makes you smile, and the thought of the row you might have about it makes you tingle.

When you get back to the village you don't have to look for him because he's right there outside the club, and he's walking towards you, and he calls out, "Where've you been?" and he looks pleased to see you. You tell him you've been for a walk, and he says, "Since when did you just go for a walk?" And he's a smart-mouthed little bastard, and you love him, and you grab his head in your hands and pull him to you, and you kiss that smart mouth and feel his lips curve into a smile against yours. When you let go of him you look at each other, and you think it's possible he reckons you've had a knock to the head since he saw you this morning, and he asks you, "What's that for?"

"I'm tired of being angry, Steven. Every time I'm angry, people get hurt." You shrug. "I got too much to lose."

"Like what?" he says. He knows what, because he knows you, but he wants to hear you say it.

"Like you, you idiot." You smile at his smile, and you're going to kiss him again, but before you do, you look around because you've heard a car door slam behind you. There's a police car there.

"Brendan Brady?"

"Officers. Business or pleasure?" Must be something to do with the club.

"There's been an allegation made against you of a serious sexual assault."

"By who?" Steven says, and you think, it doesn't matter who because it's a fucking lie.

The cop says you've got to accompany them to the station, but this is crazy and you tell him, "You've got the wrong man, again."

They're arresting you. Sexual assault and actual bodily harm. They're cuffing you. They're reading you your rights. They're manhandling you to their car.

Cheryl's there, you hear her call out to you asking what's happening, and you look at her and you look at Steven, and he's telling her that you've said you've done nothing wrong.

"Steven, look at me, okay?" He has to hear this. He has to believe you. "Whatever they're saying is lies, okay? Trust me."

As you're getting into the police car you look up and Seamus is there, and he's looking at you like he did before, like you're the man he's always known you'd become.

:::::::

They tell you nothing, just take your prints and your DNA and your belt and your laces and your next of kin, then leave you in a cell for Christ knows how long – could be two hours, could be three, but they've taken your watch off you too so you've got no idea – before they take you to an interview room.

You give an account of your movements today, what you did, where you went, who you saw. Turns out the assault is meant to have happened during the time that you don't have an alibi for. Steven was right, you don't go for walks, and now you wish you hadn't decided to start it today. And it's half an hour into the interrogation and they still haven't told you who it is that's made the allegations. They've enquired politely into your sexuality, though, so you gather it's a guy.

You've got the duty solicitor sat beside you, and you ask him, don't they have to tell you who's made the complaint? And he wakes up and reminds them that they do, and then the DC tells you who it is.

It's Kevin Foster.

You laugh when she tells you, and the solicitor gives you a warning look.

"_Kevin_? Are you serious?"

"Can you describe the nature of your relationship with Mr Foster?" the DC asks.

"I'm his boss. _Was_ his boss, cos I sacked him this afternoon, didn't I? There's your motive, officer – that's why he's wanting to stitch me up."

"So you fired Mr Foster today?"

"Yes."

"And why was that?"

Fuck.

"Dishonesty," you say.

"In what way?"

"In the way of I didn't trust him."

"And why was that?"

"He's a liar. He tells lies."

"Specifically?"

"He's told you I sexually assaulted him, for one."

"What specifically led you to fire him today? Mr Brady, the sooner you answer these questions, the sooner we can all go home."

_Home. _You want to go home.

"Okay, last night he said his uncle Robert had died of cancer, today it's his uncle Roger and it's a heart attack. Now, call me picky, but when someone can't keep track of their dead relations, seeing them handling my takings makes me a little bit jumpy. Look, detective constable, if he wants to take me to a tribunal for not following procedures then good luck to the kid, but I don't know anything about no sexual assault, yeah?"

"Did you fall out with your partner last night, Mr Brady?"

"My..? Steven? No."

"Mr Foster has stated that he witnessed an argument between you last night, after your partner – Steven Hay, is it?"

"Yeah."

"After Mr Hay saw you hugging Mr Foster when you finished work. Is that correct?"

"This is... Okay, I didn't hug Kevin, he hugged me, or tried to, and Steven saw, yeah, but there was no _argument_. Jesus."

"Did you fall out with Mr Hay over you hugging Mr Foster?"

"No."

"Is this really relevant?" the solicitor asks the officers.

"Nice of you to join us," you say to the solicitor.

"If I were to suggest," the DC says, "That you'd had a row with your partner, so you were looking for some comfort today from Mr Foster, how would you react to that suggestion, Mr Brady?"

"It's bullshit, constable." Then, because you don't swear in front of women, you add, "Excuse my language."

"And that Mr Foster turned you down, so you pushed him against the door of your office, and you grabbed his genitals, and then – "

"Bullshit." You're getting scared now: now, it's getting real. "It's bullshit. I ain't never... It's not what I do, okay, it's not who I am. I've never... I would never do that, not to anyone, it's... Why would I do that? Why would I even _do_ that? I've got a boyfriend, for chrissake, I ain't after some piece of... And even if I was, I wouldn't just... _touch_ someone, you know, not like that, not if they didn't... not if they didn't want me to, okay? I don't do that. I don't."

:::::::

There's only so many times that they can ask you the same questions and get the same answers before they call it a night and send you back down to the cells.

There's a drunk shouting the hours away in the next cell, and the other side of you there's another fella shouting at the drunk to stop shouting. You've got no chance of sleeping, but you doubt you would anyhow, because your mind is wide awake with wondering why this is happening to you and what Kevin Foster's game is. You go over and over every interaction you've had with him, and sure, you've knocked him back a few times, but was that and a bit of rough handling enough to make him accuse you of assaulting him? It doesn't add up. If his story about his uncle was a lie, then he's streetwise enough to know that he got off lightly: he's lucky you didn't give him more than the sack.

You examine the possibility that his uncle really did abuse him. You were the first person he ever told it to, or so he said, so maybe being called a liar over it made him angry enough to spin a lie about you to the police. It would fuck you up, wouldn't it, if you had the guts to confide in someone and they didn't believe you; that's why it's safer to keep your secrets. You could almost convince yourself that this was his motive – that it was revenge for you disbelieving him – except... except that he got the name of his abuser wrong, and he wouldn't do that. There is no detail that he wouldn't remember. He would remember the time of day or night; the pattern of the wallpaper, the texture of the sheets. The words or the silence. The spit landing on him. The scratch of a broken fingernail on him, in him. He would remember a cigarette smouldering on a windowsill; dust swirling and sparkling in the bright sunlight. He would remember the name of the man.

He lied about his uncle, you're certain now, just like he's lying about the assault. And the question that keeps you awake long after the drunk and the other one have given up their clamour, is, why? Why lie about _that_, about you?

If you get your hands on Kevin, you'll make him tell you.

:::::::

In the morning, they charge you with sexual assault and actual bodily harm, and then they release you, on condition that you don't approach Kevin or attempt to contact him, and that you don't leave the country.

When you come out into the front reception, Steven is there. His eyes look huge.

"What you doing here, Steven?"

He looks at you as if he doesn't understand the question. Then he says, "Are you okay, Bren?"

"They tell you they were letting me go?"

"No. They told me to go home last night cos they was keeping you here, and they wouldn't tell me anything on the phone this morning so I just came, didn't I. What have they said, Brendan?"

You sit down to thread your laces back into your shoes, and you don't look at him.

"I been charged."

"What with?" His voice is full of anxiety.

"Assault. Sexual assault, and ABH. I didn't do it, Steven, okay?"

"And it's that Kevin, that's saying you did it? That's what your solicitor told Cheryl."

"Yeah. She okay?"

"How can they charge you? There's no evidence, how can there be?"

"I dunno. Let's get out of here."

You walk out of the station, and your dad is there.

"How are you, son?" he says.

"What's he doing here?" He's the last person you want to see.

Steven says Seamus is worried about you. Sure he is. You look at him as you tell him that you've been charged with sexual assault.

"This all happened after I walked in?" he says.

"You walked in on them?" Steven asks him.

You say you need to find out what happened after Kevin ran off, and then Steven gets up in your face, telling you that you're not allowed to go near Kevin. But you're not really listening. You're looking at your dad: he's giving nothing away, but you reckon this has shaken him and he's worried about the shame you're bringing him. Him and the Brady name, dragged through the mud because he's got a pervert for a son. It's almost funny.

"Hard to believe, isn't it, Dad?" you say to him. "That your son would be capable of such a thing."

You leave him standing there.

Your breath comes out as vapour in the cold air as you walk home. Steven comes with you. He's quiet; you are too – you're thinking, thinking – but his silence is unsettling and you wonder what's going on in his head.

When you get in, he asks you if you're hungry, and you say, "Is that really what you wanna be asking me?"

"Why was you fighting with Kevin?"

You tell him that Kevin had sold you a sob story about his uncle dying. You know it doesn't sound like something worth fighting over, but it's all you can tell him without opening a can of worms. You tell him, that was the last time you saw Kevin. When you tell him that you're itching to find out why the kid is lying, Steven warns you that if you go near Kevin you'll make things worse. He's right, you know that, but you can't wait around doing nothing while your lives get wrecked. He wants you to promise to stay away though. "I mean it, Brendan, I don't need this right now," he says.

"_You_ don't need this right now? Really?" You're the one being called a sex abuser – how is this Steven's problem?

"Do you really think I'll see me kids if Amy finds out about this?"

Fuck. Course it's his problem. You're his problem, you've already lost him his kids, and now this.

"Yes. Yes, I promise."

Someone's at the door. He answers it, and it's Cheryl, and she's mad at you for not calling her to tell her how you got on, but she's here and you're glad she is, because Steven's got to go to work and right now, you want someone with you. He kisses you: "See you later." He's not giving up on you just yet, then.

You get out of yesterday's clothes, run a bath hot enough to scald you, lie in it and hope the taint of what people think you are will melt off you along with last night's sweat. Your head is full, and it's pounding. You don't know how you're going to get out of this, because if they can charge you on the strength of that lad's word against yours, then you're already on the road to a trial, a conviction, a prison stretch, a future with a name as a sex offender. The tentative progress you've made to see your children will be reversed, and you doubt they'll come near you again. And Steven's right about Amy, she'll never let him see his kids unless he's finished with you, and if you were in her position, you wouldn't either.

He'll choose his children over you if you're found guilty, you're sure of it. You can feel everything you've found and you've fought for, every hope, every fragile comfort, floating away out of reach, and you wonder if this is God's punishment for all your misdeeds. A torturous punishment, postponed until you'd had a taste of Paradise so its loss would be more cruel. You recognise the angry and vexatious God that your father threatened you with long before you learned to sin.

:::::::

Your sister is in the kitchen doing the washing up when you're out of the bath and dressed again. She asks how Steven is, and you tell her, "He knows run-ins with the law go with the territory, but this..." and your voice trails off because whatever Steven signed up for when he chose to be with you, he couldn't have predicted this, and you don't know how he's meant to deal with it. Cheryl reckons you'll get through it, because if you can't – you and Steven – what hope is there for anyone else? And it makes you wonder if she's having problems with this fella of hers, Nate, and you hope not because if you get sent down, she'll need someone to take care of her, and you don't want that someone to be her dad.

She doesn't want to talk about it, just changes the subject and asks why Kevin's doing this. You tell her you don't know, and as soon as she sees that you want to get out of here and go and find out for yourself, she's on at you, asking if you want to be in prison, which you will be for sure if you don't leave the police to do their job. You tell her she's right; but what she doesn't get, and what you don't tell her because you don't want to frighten her, is that you're going to end up inside anyway if you don't do anything to sort this.

Cheryl says she's surprised that Seamus isn't here. Disappointed, even.

You're so on edge that you're reckless: it would almost be a relief if Cheryl knew what he was, then at least you'd have one person who understood why the accusation you're facing is pretty much the worst thing anyone could say about you. "It must be hard," you say about your dad, "Fearing that you've reared a monster," and, "Maybe it's just a little too close to home." She doesn't get your drift, of course she doesn't: she just tells you that your dad loves you, and the moment passes, and your anger retreats into fear, and you can't get sent down again for something you didn't do, you can't. Last time was bad enough but if you're jailed for this, you know what happens to sex offenders in prison, and it terrifies you, and you know what happens to you when you're without Steven, and it terrifies you more.

You tell your sister that you feel as if the walls are closing in, and she comes to you, tells you that you've got her and you've got Steven, and they're not going to let anything bad happen to you. She hugs you, and you hold on to her and try to believe that she's right.

:::::::

She's made you something to eat, and you didn't think you'd be able to eat anything but you did, because you found that you were starving.

You've managed to persuade her that you'll be okay on your own so she can go off and see Nate without worrying about you. Before she goes, you ask her why she hasn't asked you if you did it.

"Because I know you," Cheryl answers.

"You know what I've done, in the past."

"Never this. You wouldn't do it."

"Okay." You don't say any more, but you won't forget that your sister stood by you: unconditional love, isn't that what they call it?

:::::::

As soon as Cheryl leaves, you leave too, and you track Kevin down. He's been beaten up bad: his face when you glimpse it is bruised and swollen, and he's in pain walking – he knows you're following him but he can't run. You don't know what you're going to do when you get hold of him, but you know you have to keep a hold of yourself because you're going against the wishes of Cheryl and Steven in seeking him out, and you can't risk losing them by battering him. In the end you don't get to do anything, ask him anything, because while you're on Kevin's trail, your dad is on yours, and he makes you come away.

Seamus thinks you're guilty, he makes that clear. He reckons you were after Kevin to finish what you started: he reminds you that he heard you threaten to kill the kid yesterday, and he saw you follow him out of the club. You wonder if your dad would share that information with the police.

You ask him, "Do you really hate me that much? Do you?"

"I know you, son. Better than you know yourself."

Kevin's disappeared. You walk past your dad, away in the opposite direction.

You don't need to look around to know that Seamus is behind you: you can feel him there, his eyes on you, making the hairs on the back of your neck prickle.

You stop dead, and he almost walks into you. You turn around in time to see his momentary surprise disappear behind a mask.

"What, Dad? What d'you want?"

"Where you going now? Going to see if that young boy of yours will still have you, now he knows you've been sniffing around for fresh meat?" He smiles at you.

"You don't talk about Steven," you say, and your fists clench – as much because you need to hide the tremor in your hands as because you want to punch your dad.

"Touched a nerve, have I, Brenda? I told you, I know you. You just can't help yourself."

You take a step back. You feel as if you're shrinking in front of him, but you square your shoulders and look him in the eye.

"I ain't you, Dad."

You turn and walk away again, and again your dad walks with you, and he's still with you when you arrive in the middle of the village.

Steven's outside the deli, talking with Douglas. He sees you, and straight off starts getting on at you, demanding to know where you've been. And Seamus doesn't waste any time filling him in about how he found you going after Kevin, and how he had to talk you down or you'd have done God knows what to the kid. "Thanks, Seamus," Steven says, and hearing him take your dad's part is a punch in the gut.

Your hurt turns to anger: "Are you seriously gonna believe this?"

"I can't believe you."

"All I wanted to do was talk to him, okay, find out why he was lying."

Next thing, Kevin shows up. Douglas spots him first – he would – and you can deny it til your last breath but the state of the kid's face says you're guilty.

Steven holds you back from going near Kevin, tells you to leave it, and you stay with him when Kevin walks past you and heads off to where he's staying with Maxine. Seamus has gone too, off home you guess, and now you focus on Steven because as the battle lines are drawn, you need to know that he's shoulder to shoulder with you. You grab him, "Hey, Steven, listen to me, I never touched him. Okay, this is a set-up, he's setting me up."

He shakes your hands off him, moves a pace back. You're losing him, you can feel him separating himself from you, and you reckon it's got to be the thought of getting caught in the crossfire that's scaring him and making him want to retreat. It can't be that he's changed sides. It can't be.

"You promised me you'd stay away," he says.

"They're going to lock me up, Steven." He sees that, doesn't he? He sees that you couldn't sit back and do nothing – that you can't go to prison again.

He thinks you're acting like you're guilty.

"Did you do it?"

It's happening.

"What?" you say, but you know what he's asking.

"Did you attack Kevin?"

He's made his choice, and it's not you, but you fight it, you try and make him see that you went after Kevin because you've got to try everything in your power to stop him wrecking your lives, not just yours but Steven's, the children's. "Why would I lay a hand on him when I got you and the kids to look after, huh?" you ask, but Steven doesn't buy it, his anger is up and he says that all you think about is you. You're seeing what he really thinks of you now, and you're reeling from it. "How can you ask me if I'm guilty? How?" You hear your own voice cracking, and you're lost.

"How could I not, Brendan, after everything we've been through?" He's shouting now, and all the while, Douglas is standing there, watching, listening – waiting to pick up the spoils when the battle's done, maybe.

"Let me make this very easy on the both of us, then, yeah?" You turn away from Steven and walk, and you hear him calling after you, but you don't stop.

:::::::

You spend a few hours in the pub – not the Dog, but somewhere a cab ride away where there is less chance of seeing anyone who knows you and who's heard the gossip – and then when you are sure the deli will be closed so there's no chance of bumping into Steven on your way, you come to work.

Good news travels fast in a village like this, and the club isn't exactly busy, but there's still a few punters who aren't going to let their night out be ruined by any scruples about propping up the profits of a sex offender.

Tonight, you will wait until the last of them go home, and then you'll lock yourself in here and drink yourself to sleep on the couch in the office. You'll think about Steven, and you'll hope that when his anger passes he'll remember that the sex you've taken from him, right from the start, was in his gift. He'll remember that for all the things you've done, there are lines you don't cross: never have, never will.

You turn off your phone, not because you don't want to talk to him if he calls, but because you don't want to know if he doesn't.


	15. Chapter 15

You've slept okay, considering. Considering the charges against you, and your public enemy status, and that your lover thinks you're lying to him, and that this couch here in your office wasn't built for a six foot tall man to sleep on. Maybe it was your exhaustion that sent you to sleep, after the almost sleepless night you had the night before in that police cell; plus, the quantity of whiskey you put away was enough to knock anyone out.

When you wake up in the morning you lie and stare at the ceiling, and you think. Things are clearer today, and you can see a little of Steven's point of view. _Did you do it_? he asked you yesterday, _Did you attack Kevin_? And his words cut you like a blade, and you said to him, _How can you ask me if I'm guilty_? But now that your wounds are not so fresh, you can see his answer for what it was: _How could I not, Brendan, after everything we've been through? _He's scared, isn't he? He's had years, on and off, of people telling him you're bad news, and when the police are sure enough of your guilt to charge you, and when the whole world is telling him you are lying, of course he's going to have a moment when he wonders if you are. Seamus didn't help, telling Steven he'd stopped you doing who knows what to Kevin, and then Kevin himself hobbling by, with a face like a punchbag, was the final push, you guess. One look at him must have made Steven remember all the times you've laid into him. It was a perfect storm.

Once you've managed to straighten out your aching back, you go and make yourself a coffee, and then you come back to the office and switch on your phone. There's a voicemail from Cheryl from a few minutes ago, she says she's just checking if you're okay. And there's a text from Steven, timed at two o'clock this morning: _Waited up where are u? Goin bed now_. You take a gulp of your coffee. You didn't think he would have tried to get in touch, going by how angry with you he was last time you saw him, and seeing his message sends a wave of relief through you, that maybe yesterday was just another bump in this road that you're walking together. You can take any pain he brings when he's with you, because the alternative kills you.

You go out of the fire escape door onto the balcony to get some air, and when you look down at the deli, you see Steven outside there, and you can't take your eyes off him. And then along comes Douglas, and touches him – puts a hand on his back and steers him inside the shop – and what is it? Friendly? Comforting, is it? Looks possessive to you, like he's seen a gap between you and Steven and he's insinuating his way into it.

You go back inside.

:::::::

Maxine thinks you're guilty, same as everyone else does, never mind that she's Anne's sister and you'd think she'd trouble herself to get your side of the story, seeing as she must know how close you are to Anne. Were. You _were_ close to Anne, before she upped and left, but you haven't called her back since she left you that voicemail when she got to the States, and when you ask yourself why not, all you can come up with is that you feel as if she's abandoned you.

You come out of the club just as Maxine is arriving for work, and just in time to see Kevin sloping off. They're mates, Maxine and Kevin, and she's chosen whose side she's on, and you tell her she's lucky she's popular with the customers or she'd be looking at getting the sack. The fact is, though, that you can't fire her, because if you go away you're going to need someone to keep Chez Chez open, and even if Cheryl was still interested, you wouldn't want to burden her with it. And you're thinking you might be going away, because the chances are that a jury is going to see things the same as everyone else seems to.

When Maxine goes inside, you can drop the hard man act, and the reality of your situation drains you; then you look across the street, and there's Steven coming out of the deli with Douglas, and it's the middle of the morning but they're locking up, and they walk off somewhere, and Douglas has his arm around Steven. You were going to go over there and try and talk to Steven, tell him you were sorry for pushing him away instead of seeing his point of view yesterday: but you can't now, because he's gone out with his husband. So you follow Maxine back into the club.

:::::::

A letter has come for you, in among the bills and the junk mail. It's from the court service, giving you notice to attend for your committal hearing. Jesus, they're not wasting any time: it's in two weeks.

You go out of the club, away from Maxine's prying eyes and into the light and the air. The deli is still closed. You go up the steps to Cheryl's flat but you stop, because you don't know who's at home and you don't want to walk in and find your dad, and you've left your phone at work so you can't call your sister to find out. So you walk back down and you sit by the fountain, and all the people who pass by seem to look at you, and whisper to each other, and keep their distance; and you don't even know half these people, but they know you and they've heard what you're accused of, and they believe what they've heard.

You need to get away. You need to get your head straight before the court date, and that's not going to happen if you stay here for the next two weeks, where everyone who sees you sees a sex attacker. And there's another thing that's worrying you, and that's the possibility that the judge at the plea hearing will remand you in custody until the trial. It's not likely – the police were happy to release you after they charged you, so you doubt that they'll oppose bail now – but then, getting charged for a crime with no evidence wasn't likely, and getting accused of something you didn't do wasn't likely either, when there's so much you've got away with that you _did_ do. It's a possibility that you've got to consider, that as of two weeks' time you'll be locked up until your trial, and Christ knows what after that. So you make a decision: you're going to see your kids.

When you go back to the club, Maxine's gone missing, but there are no customers anyhow so it's the least of your problems.

You go into the office. Your phone isn't where you thought you left it, and you have a quick scout around for it in the bars but you can't find it anywhere. You need to call Eileen though, so you find her number and ring her from the landline.

"The boys are at school, Brendan, you'll have to phone tonight." She sounds her usual self, and you guess that word hasn't reached her of your arrest.

"I ain't phoning for them, I wanted to talk to you, just let you know I'm coming over."

"And what's that got to do with me?"

"My boys. I'll want to see them, won't I."

"Brendan, you can't just keep dropping into their lives like this, it's... it's disruptive."

You fight to keep your rising temper from reaching your voice.

"I'm their dad, sweetheart. It went okay last time, didn't it? Come on."

"That was half term. It's different when they're at school, they've got homework and – "

"It's Saturday tomorrow, I'll be there first thing, we'll have the whole weekend. Let me see them. Please."

Eileen sighs loudly.

"If they want to see you, I won't stop them. But I'm not promising they will, okay?"

"Okay."

"And call first, I'm not having you just turn up on the doorstep. Where you planning on staying? You can't stay here."

"I know." Jesus. "Dunno. B&B, hotel, something. I'll call you in the morning, yeah?"

"Bye, Brendan."

Every conversation with Eileen is a battle, but this time you've felt a weird kind of comfort in the familiarity of her antagonism: at least there are some things in your life that remain the same. Still, you go and pour yourself a whiskey. Then you get online and book yourself onto the ten o'clock night ferry. You're taking the car this time, the kids will like that.

:::::::

You feel as if you're putting your affairs in order, and you are in a sense, although you don't know if you're leaving just for your trip to Ireland, or for a prison stretch after that. You concentrate on getting all the paperwork in order in the office, the order book, the payroll: you go down into the cellar and check the stock levels, and call a couple of suppliers to order anything that might run out before you come back for the hearing. You check how much cash there is in the safe, and then you give Cheryl a call. As you pick up your phone from the desk, you realise it has reappeared just where you'd thought you left it when you looked for it earlier, but your sister answers before you have a chance to puzzle over that particular mystery.

"Bren, I've gone and made an eejit of myself. It's Nate, I thought he was having an affair only it was his mother all the time – not that he was having an affair with his mother, obviously, that would be weird, but better in a way, wouldn't it, cos at least she's not another woman. Well, she is another woman, but not an _other_ _woman_ – and anyhow, we all went round to this big posh house to confront him, only it was her house, and she must think I'm the most – "

"Chez. Chez, I need to... I wanted to tell you, I've got my court date – "

"The trial? Already?"

"No, it's just when I enter my plea, okay, nothing for you to worry about."

"When is it?"

"Couple of weeks. But listen, I'm going to see the boys, over on the ferry tonight, okay? I don't want them hearing about it from anyone else, so."

"Want me to come with you, love?"

"No. No, I want you to keep an eye on the club for me, okay? You don't need to run it, but I ain't giving anyone else the combination for the safe, so will you make sure there's change in the tills, and put the takings away? If there's any takings."

"Yes, course. Course I will."

"And... will you keep an eye on Steven for me? He's... he'll be on his own, and he's not used to that, is he. I mean, he'll probably be glad to see the back of me, but..."

"Oh, love. Have you told him you're going?"

"Not yet. I'm heading home now, I'll explain it to him if he..."

"Are you okay, Bren? You and Ste, you're okay?"

"I better head now, Chez, gotta get packed and... I'll call you or..."

"Give the boys a hug from me, won't you? Love you."

"Love you too." You're about to say goodbye, then you remember her rambling story about her relationship drama. "You'll work it out with Nate, sis, yeah? He's a good lad." He's someone who can take care of her if you're not around, so she's not stuck with only Seamus.

"Is that the Brendan Brady seal of approval? I'd better hold on to him, then." You can hear the smile in her voice, and you shut your eyes for a moment and picture her. "Bye, Bren. Have a good time with the boys."

There's still no sign of Maxine, so you have a word with one of the barmen, tell him to pass on the news that you're off for a week or so and if there are any problems they should call Cheryl. Then you head off.

Steven's in the deli but Douglas is there too so you don't go in: this is not a conversation you want an audience for. You walk home, and you pack a bag, and you look at your suits hanging on the rail and find yourself wondering which one you'll wear for your court appearance; not that it'll make any difference, the judge will see past the suit to the man inside it.

You look around the flat, at the pictures on the walls, Leah's butterflies and unicorns in confident crayon as if she sees them as clearly as she sees the figures in the family portraits she draws of _Daddy, Leah, Lucas, Daddy Brendan_. You wonder which she'll believe in for longer, the unicorns or you. You get the Jameson's out of the cupboard and pour one, swallow it and pour a second, and go and sit down to wait for Steven to get back.

"You're home," he says when he comes in. You are now, now that he's in it: it's home when he's here.

You tell him that you've been looking through your wardrobe and you think you might need a new suit.

"You know me, Steven. I like to look sharp for court." You stand and you point out the letter from the court that's lying on the table. "Less than two weeks."

You haven't touched your second whiskey, and you pour it down the sink and turn around to face him and lean back against the worktop. He's holding the letter, frowning at it, and he might not be able to figure out all the words but he gets the gist, and the fear in his face is like a child's fear of a nightmare, and you love him so much that you can hardly look at him..

"Look, Brendan," he says, and you tell him it's okay, and he says, "No, I shouldn't have doubted you yesterday, I know that. You know, what I said, it was just... it was horrible. I'm sorry."

"You don't ever have to apologise to me, Steven, not ever." He has given you more than he will ever realise, and he owes you nothing.

He tells you he should have been the first person in your corner; but he shouldn't, you tell him, not after everything you've done.

"I know that you're innocent, though," he says, and his words surprise you but you look at his face and you think he's telling the truth, and you ask him how he knows, and he says, "I can just see it, right?" He puts his hands on you, cool and familiar on the sides of your neck. "Right, I love you, for ever, and I don't care what anybody says. Yeah?" _For ever_. He kisses you then, and it feels as if he's trying to kiss belief into you. "Look at me," he says, and what you see in his wide, frightened eyes is a kind of desperation, and you recognise it, because you've felt it too many times, that panic that you're losing the thing that gives you life. "We will get through this together," he says, and he hugs his arms around your neck and clings to you as if he knows you're going.

"You've no idea how much that means to me," you tell him, but you ease him back and tell him that you're sorry but you can't do it, that your head can't take this place, the faces. Steven's hands drop away from you, and you try to make him understand. "I need to see my kids, in case..." And he breaks in, and he's blaming himself as if he thinks he's driven you away by doubting you, and you stop him, touch his chest, tell him, "I'm not leaving cos of you. I'm leaving for me. Look, Steven" – and you take his face in your hands – "There is nothing you can do that'll make me stop loving you. Nothing."

"Please," he says, and there are tears in his eyes.

"And I do love you," you tell him, but you're hurting him, you can see it in his face, and you need him to believe you. "Very much." You don't say any more, because if you tell him the truth about how much you love him, you think it might scare him more than he's already scared.

You let go of him because if you touch him for any longer you won't be able to stop. You look away, because if you keep looking at him, you won't be able to stop. You don't kiss his eyelids to catch his tears, and you don't kiss his mouth again, because you know if you do, it won't stop at kisses.

You're no good at goodbyes.

You pick up your bag and let yourself out.

When you get into your car, you sit for a minute until your hands stop shaking and you can see straight. Then you start the engine, and head for the road to Liverpool, and the ferry port.

:::::::

Your bed is comfortable but your cabin is the size of a prison cell, and it's hard to get to sleep. You have to remind yourself that you're a free man, there's no one in the other bed, and the door is only locked because you've locked it. You don't get undressed, so that you can get up and go out into the corridor if it gets too claustrophobic in here. Eventually you drift into sleep, but when you wake in the night you panic for a moment until the motion of the sea reminds you where you are. You switch the light on then and leave it on.

When the boat docks in Belfast you're impatient to drive off, but you're anxious too, and when you're pulled over for a spot check you wonder if you've made a mistake and the terms of your release don't allow you to leave England. You know you couldn't have gone to Dublin, but as they're back in the North during term time you'd assumed you were okay to visit them here. If you're wrong, you'll be sent straight to jail for breaching your bail. The officials don't find anything untoward when they run whatever checks they run, though, so you drive on into the city.

You find a hotel a few streets away from Eileen's place, and although it's not long after seven, you're able to book in and get access to your room.

This is the third day now that you've worn these clothes, and you're glad to get out of them and into the shower; then you shave, order some breakfast and call Eileen. She hasn't asked the boys yet whether they want to see you, because she didn't want to risk disappointing them if you'd changed your mind about coming. You could fucking swing for her when she says that to you, but then she says she'll talk to the boys and ring you back, and while you're waiting you have a word with yourself, and of course she doesn't trust you to keep your promise: why would she? You've got form.

"You can pick Paddy up from here at eleven," she tells you when she phones back, "And go and watch Declan's football practice then take them both for lunch. No junk food. Don't be late."

:::::::

Michael Donovan opens the door to you. You don't chat.

Padraig comes running out and into your arms, and Eileen almost smiles when she sees how glad he is to see you. She comes out onto the doorstep and you kiss her on the cheek and say, "Thanks for this."

"You'll bring this one home," she says, "If Declan doesn't."

"Course, yeah."

You're going to have to tell her about your court case, but not yet. You can't yet, because you can't risk her stopping you seeing the boys while you're here.

Padraig chatters non stop on the way to the park, and takes you away from your troubles. He makes you laugh, and you wonder if he is what you would have been if your childhood hadn't ended when you were eight years old. The worst thing in his life is that his parents are not together, but he's got stability all the same with his mother and Michael, and it's obvious he's happy. His brother is too: he's on the football pitch in the thick of things, and when he sees you he waves. Okay so maybe he's just waving at Padraig, but he doesn't scowl at you, so you'll take that as progress.

He's different than last time, Declan is. Over lunch you notice it, he's more conversational, and he even cracks a smile now and then, like he used to do back when the rarity of your visits lent you a kind of glamour in his eyes, before he worked out that absentee parents aren't impressive. It pains you that just when it looks like there's hope for your relationship with your boys, you've got the shadow of those accusations on you, threatening to black out everything that matters to you.

You don't know if pizzas count as fast food in Eileen's eyes, but that's what Padraig wanted like he had with you in Dublin, so you've taken them to this Italian place. Declan's having pasta; you offer him a slice of your pepperoni pizza just to wind him up, "Come on, you're not still a vegetarian, are you?"

"Come on," he says, "You're not still growing that moustache, are you?"

It's banter. It's good.

You think it's going well, the boys are enjoying being here. You're relaxing, and you think they are too, until you notice that Declan's started checking the time on his phone, and after he's done it a few times, you ask him, "You gotta be somewhere,?"

He's defensive, "No, and it's none of your business, is it?"

"Yes you have," Padraig says to him.

"Shut up, Pad."

"He's got a date," Padraig says to you, and then he sing-songs, "Declan's got a girlfriend."

"Oh yeah?" you say, and you watch Declan blush. "Girlfriend, is it?"

"Yeah," he mutters.

"That's... that's cool," you say.

"Don't say 'cool', Dad."

"He _loves_ her," Padraig teases, and gets himself a kick from his brother.

"What's she like?" you ask.

"That's her." Declan shows you a picture on his phone of a dark haired, green eyed girl.

"She's grand," you tell him.

Your desserts arrive, saving Declan from his embarrassment. You feel proud of him, like he's reached a milestone; and ashamed of yourself that you've missed so many others in his life and in Padraig's.

:::::::

Eileen calls you next morning and says you can pick up the boys from her mother's after Sunday lunch, seeing as how they weren't showing any extra signs of delinquency after their Saturday afternoon with you. Eileen won't be there – she's spending some quality time with Michael – so you won't have the opportunity to tell her about the trial you're facing; you're relieved, but you know you'll have to bite the bullet sooner or later.

You don't relish the prospect of seeing your former mother-in-law: she started hating you when you got her little girl pregnant, and it went downhill from there.

She answers the door to you herself. You've not seen her since before Eileen threw you out three summers ago, and by the way she looks you up and down you guess that her opinion of you hasn't changed any.

"Brendan," she says.

"Marian. Looking lovely as ever."

She sniffs.

"Come in if you're coming. I'll fetch the boys."

You follow her into the house, and she calls out to Declan and Padraig that their dad is here and they're to get their coats on. You loiter in the hallway, and Padraig comes bounding out of the front room to greet you. His brother takes his time, but as soon as they're ready you hurry them out. You don't know which members of Eileen's family might be inside – there always was a crowd for the Sunday roast – but none of them will have set eyes on you since word spread that you were queer, and right now you can't stand the thought of their eyes on you, judging and despising. Not right now, when you've got no one by your side, no one to go home to.

In the car, Declan mentions Macca's name. He was there, at their nan's for dinner, apparently.

"See much of him, do you?" you ask.

"Only at Nan's," Declan says. "Mum doesn't like him, does she, so he doesn't come round ours. He said to say hi."

"He's getting married," Padraig says.

:::::::

You can't put off your conversation with Eileen any longer.

You've met the boys from school on Tuesday and taken them out for their tea, and when you drop them home after, you tell their mother that you need to talk to her. She says she'll meet you in her lunch break from work next day, and tells you when and where, and that's where you are now, waiting in a bar for her at one o'clock on Wednesday.

"Still drinking in the daytime are you, Brendan?" She eyes your whiskey glass.

"Don't start, Eileen, please. What can I get you?"

"I don't want anything, I'm not stopping. Just say what you want to say."

"You suggested this bar," you snap at her, then you rein yourself in. "Sit down. Please."

"Vodka and tonic," she says. "A small one, mind."

You get a drink for her and another for yourself, and you ask the barman to turn the music down: it's pounding out of the speakers as if this is a nightclub, but it's the middle of the day for fucksake. _Ready, steady, go_: the tune is getting under your skin. It's familiar from your club, but that's not all, there's some association with it but you can't put your finger on it.

You take the drinks to the table.

"Eileen, I've got... There's something happened, and you need to know in case... cos you might hear about it anyways, and I don't want..."

"God, Brendan, spit it out."

You take a mouthful of whiskey, and a deep breath.

"I been charged with something, okay, and I didn't do it, but it's going to court, and – "

"Charged with what?"

"Assault."

"Oh, god."

"I didn't do it, Eileen, I swear. I'd tell you if I had, why wouldn't I? You couldn't think less of me, so."

"So who's saying you did it?"

"Some lad I gave the sack to. I think it's, I dunno, revenge or something."

"A _lad_?"

"Yeah."

"What kind of assault are we talking about? Brendan?"

"ABH." You weigh it up, but you've got to come clean or she'll hear it from someone else and then she'll assume you've lied about the whole thing. "And he says... he says I sexually assaulted him. Groped him, you know? But I didn't. I wouldn't, Eileen, you got to believe me."

_Ready, steady, go._ A boy in the club: you picked him up, didn't you? More than a year ago it was, to punish Steven for believing that you'd killed Rae, and to punish him for trying to help you after your innocence was proved. That's it, that's what this song is making you think of, but it's not all of it. There's something else, if you could think of it. _Ready, ready, ready._

"_Sexual_ assault?" Eileen gulps at her drink. "And you tell me this now? After I've let the boys start getting to know you again?"

"Jesus, Eileen, what's that got to do with anything? I'm telling you now, ain't I? I told you, I ain't guilty, and... Look, I'm trying to be a dad to them, make it up to them for when I wasn't. I've a right to see them."

"If you think I'll be bringing them to see you in prison, you've got another think coming."

"It won't come to that. And if... if it does, I wouldn't want you to bring them anyhow, it's no place for kids, it's... I ain't going to prison."

She's silent for a minute, then she says quietly, "I know you've got into fights, always did, but you don't go around assaulting people."

You'd forgotten how little you've let her know you in all the years you've known her.

"So you believe me, then?"

Eileen looks at you for a long time, then she says, "Yes."

You nod. "Thank you."

"What about Ste?" She manages to say the name without curling her lip. "Standing by his man, is he?"

Is he? You close your eyes for a moment, and the answer comes to you. _I love you, for ever, and I don't care what anybody says... We will get through this together._

"Steven's good as gold," you say.

"You must be doing something right. God alone knows what."

You laugh at that, and she smiles back. Maybe she's remembering, like you are, the times she stood by you when the police came knocking.

She stops smiling when you say to her, "I've got to tell the boys." Saying this out loud makes you sweat, never mind saying it to them. "In case, you know, it doesn't go my way in court."

"I'll have to tell them if it comes to that, Bren, but I hope to god it doesn't. You've done enough damage without them knowing you've got yourself accused of – "

"No, I can't chance it. If I get sent down and that's the first thing they know about it, they'll never... They've got to hear it from me, Eileen, okay?"

She argues with you, and you get it, you get that she wants to protect the kids, but you can't let her win this one. You can't let your sons get this news second hand, because you know whoever tells them – Eileen, someone in the school playground, anyone but you – they won't get your side of the story. And you can't have that.

You wear her down, and she agrees. "But leave out the gory details, Brendan, for god's sake."

"There are no gory details, because I didn't touch him."

:::::::

The nights are long. When you get back to the hotel each night, you watch the television in your room into the early hours. You're used to being at work until late, so your sleep pattern is fucked – it has been for years – but you've slept better this year than for as long as you can remember, with Steven beside you. Sex makes you sleep: after the fire and the lights and the full-on life of it, you're spent and sated, and unconsciousness comes easily to you. It's not just exhaustion, though; you sleep even if you haven't fucked yourselves into it, as long as he's there, your arms around him, his around you. It – he – is your sanctuary, from your fears and your enemies and your thoughts.

Away from him, other rules apply: there's no tranquility for you when you're on your own.

You're lying on the bed, your shoulders propped against the headboard, a glass of whiskey resting on your stomach. You turn the tv off with the remote, and it's silent now, and the vacuum is filled with that track in your head, and you remember. It wasn't that boy in Chez Chez all that time ago that's stirring your 's the same tune but reclaimed by a different boy in Chez Chez, and it was just a few weeks ago, not a year and more.

You were at work. It was only maybe seven or half past, but it was busy already, there were a load of girls in starting out early on a hen night, and it was set to be a long shift. You'd gone into the office for a minute to yourself, and the door opened and Steven came in, and shut it behind him.

"What you doing here?" you asked him.

He was in his work clothes, must have not long finished. You felt lighter just for seeing him.

"Just thought I'd come and say hello."

You can't remember where the kids were. Judo or play dates or whatever; he had to pick them up in a bit, you remember him saying that.

"Hello," you said, and he came around the desk and you thought he was going to kiss you when he leant over you, but he didn't, he frisked you instead til he found your keys in your jacket pocket, and he went and locked the door and turned back to face you.

The music from outside in the bar was thumping through the walls, the door. You could feel the floor vibrating, and your heart started beating along with it.

"You working til closing?" he asked, and he shrugged off his coat and dropped it onto the couch.

"Yeah."

"Shame. " His fingers were nimble as he unbuttoned his shirt. He did a little shimmy as he eased it off over his shoulders, and you laughed, and you asked him, "What is this?" and he said, "Told you, I just come to say hello. And, you know, give you something to keep you going."

"Is it a jam sandwich?"

He smiled at that, a flash of white teeth, and threw his shirt on top of his coat. He had a white T-shirt on. You can remember thinking about the body it was hiding, the smooth skin that looked like it must taste of honey, the shadows between his ribs as he breathed. You weren't breathing, you remember that too.

He got his first shoe off with a degree of elegance, standing on one leg to untie the laces than kicking it off. The second one was more problematic, it took too long to untie it so he wobbled and hopped as he tried; he tends to tie knots instead of bows, you've seen him do it and you've heard Leah tell him, _No, Daddy, you're doing it wrong._

He got it untied and off in the end. You didn't laugh.

Another track came on outside, muffled but strident, and he started dancing as he crossed his arms in front of him and took hold of the hem of his T-shirt and pulled it up, and as he stretched up to pull it off over his head, his waist looked as if your hands would meet around it if he was close enough for you to reach out to him, only he was over there and you were sitting behind your desk, and mesmerised.

"You dancing for me now?" you asked him.

"Yeah. Dancing for you," and he grinned and unbuckled his belt, dropped his chinos and stepped out of them.

Your eyes are closed, as you lie here on this hotel bed, and your hand goes to your crotch and you feel your cock bulging inside your tracksuit bottoms. You didn't touch yourself then, though, in your office watching your lover do a striptease for you. You wanted to, but you made yourself resist: delay would pay off, and you wanted it to be him that rewarded you.

He had on his red boxers with the white waistband, soft and tight. "Want me to take 'em off?" he asked.

"Yeah."

"Tell me, then."

Demanding little fucker.

"Steven. Take off your boxers."

He turned his back to slip them off, and looked at you over his shoulder as you looked at his arse. You must have started breathing again, because you could hear your breaths then along with the beat of your heart, louder than the music, or that's how it seemed. And when he turned back to face you, your breath caught in your throat and your heart came up to meet it. His dick was half erect, and flushed, and you knew what it would feel like in your hand, its skin taut as it swelled; the weight of it. It was lovely. He was – he was _lovely_.

He threw his boxers at you, and the reflex that allowed you to catch them surprised you because you were stupefied until then, and then the act of catching them released you, and you stood up to go and get him, but he said, "No." So you sat back down, and he came to you and straddled your lap, and he unbuttoned your shirt and ran his palms across your chest, and you stroked your hands up his flanks. There was sweat there, you can remember that, a trickle from under his arms. You can remember everything about how he was that evening, the textures of him, the heat; the shadows of his eyelashes; his tongue appearing between his lips as he unbuckled your belt and unzipped you. You can remember thinking that him being naked while you were clothed made him seem vulnerable and powerful both at once, and how confusing that paradox was to you, and how it excited you.

You get up off the bed and go into the bathroom, turn on the shower and take off your clothes. The water is cold when you first get in, and you swear at it, and as it heats up you soap yourself with a handful of shower gel, and you close your eyes and get back to your memories, and your wet hand slides the length of your cock.

He kissed you, hard and deep, his fingers linked behind your head. Then when he broke for air you stood up so he had to, and you kissed him, and then you turned him around and he bent over the desk, and you spat onto your fingers, and as you made him wet, his hands slid forward on the desk sending papers and files tumbling onto the floor. Another tune was throbbing in from the dance floor as you spread him and entered him. You held his hips, dug your fingers into them as you pushed up inside him until your pelvis met his buttocks. _Ready, steady, go._ His arms were braced on the table top, and he finessed the angle that he held himself so your cock rubbed just where he wanted it to as you ground into him.

"That good?" you asked him. He only managed an _Mmm_ in response, so you asked him again, "Steven? Tell me."

"Yeah. Fuck, yeah, it's... _fuck_..."

You pulled him upright, and held him with his back against your chest, your arm tightly around his stomach. He was on tiptoe, you remember; maybe his feet left the floor. _Ready – go. _You took his cock in your free hand, and you closed your teeth on his shoulder as you jerked him off, and when you could tell from his noises and his heat that he was going to come, you let him lean forward again and you leaned with him and you bit hard into the nape of his neck, and you cupped your hand around the head of his dick so when he came he filled your palm. _Ready, ready, ready._

You can't remember if it was his scream or the convulsions inside him that made you come, seconds after he did. You can remember that he fell forward and you went with him, and you were both laughing, and then you lifted him up and held him against you again with your hand around his throat, and you smeared your fistful of his cum over his belly, and he twisted his head around to kiss you.

_Ready, steady, go. _A jet of cum hits the tiles, and you lean against the wall for a moment, then you angle the shower head to sluice it clean. You turn up the pressure, and the water stings as it hits your skin.

You dry yourself off and go to bed.

You fall asleep quickly, but you're restless and it's not long before you wake up again, and you return in your mind to that night.

That night, when you got home from Chez Chez, Steven was waiting up for you. He was luminous, his eyes shining when he saw you, and you took him to bed and fucked him again, and slept a dreamless sleep, your bodies moulded together until morning.


	16. Chapter 16

You've been here more than a week now, but when you wake up it takes you a moment to remember where you are. The room swims into focus – you put yourself to sleep with whiskey last night – and you register your surroundings. If you close your eyes again, you can imagine that he's here with you. Not in the bed, because you can't kid yourself that there's a warm body within reach, but maybe he's stepped into the bathroom and will be back in a minute, telling you off for colonising his side of the bed.

He'd like it here. He likes hotels, even those basic ones you went to with him a few times, way back when secrecy was life or death to you and you had no place to take him to, or at least no place where you weren't liable to be walked in on, by his ex or his girlfriend or your sister or, if you were at work, by pretty much anyone. You'd drive miles to a hotel, never the same one twice, for a night or an afternoon with him, and you can remember how excited he was just to be in a hotel, never mind that they were the utilitarian kind used by business travellers. He'd want to use the shower in the en suite because he only had a bath at home, and you'd let him even though you didn't care if he was dirty.

You've been meaning to get a shower put in at home. You will, when this is all over.

When this is all over, you'll take him to a hotel, a proper one. A holiday one, somewhere hot: it's been a long winter. The sun doesn't suit you, but it suits him; you remember the glow on him when he came back from Florida – it hurt your eyes to look at him, but you couldn't look away, and you wanted him more than you'd ever wanted him, and he knew it, and it made him cruel. Not that you didn't deserve it, the way you'd treated him, but at the time the humiliation when he toyed with you made you hate him almost as much as you hated yourself.

That was in another life.

Somewhere hot, you'll take him. You'll spend the days in the shade, watching him in the pool – there'll be a pool – splashing and swimming, or heaving himself out and drying off in the sun. He can swim, can't he? Yes, you think he can, because didn't he tell you once that he flirted with Amy when they went to the local swimming baths with their school? There was something he said, about getting his trunks nicked, and you laughed when he told you, and he got pissed off with you for laughing. _I was mortified_, he said, and the choice of the word and the way he said it, _mortified_, made you laugh harder, and he sulked until you said you were sorry.

The sea, maybe. That'll be better than a pool. And white sand that clings to his skin when he stands up, and burns the soles of your feet as you walk back together to your hotel in the evening. And you'll both shower, and there'll be a breeze by then, blowing in from the open balcony doors and cooling the room, but the heat of the sun will still be in his bones. He'll be indolent and malleable, and the bed will be white-sheeted and huge, and what you do with him will slick his burnished skin with sweat.

You'll be seeing him tomorrow. You're booked on tonight's ferry, so you've got one final chance to man up and tell your sons about the trial that you're facing, and you must do it so that they'll know, if it goes badly for you, that you've been straight with them at least. You had your chances over the weekend but your nerve failed you, and you gave in to the temptation to keep the conversation shallow: you've missed so much time with them that you just wanted to take them out and feel _ordinary_. But it's now or never, and when you see them after school today, you'll have to tell them.

Things are going to be different, now that you've changed. Once you've cleared your name, you're going to make sure you keep in touch with your kids' lives, and you're going to do everything you can to get Leah and Lucas back so that Steven will never have the regrets that you have. You've been so disorientated by the charges against you that you've been distracted, but you realise now, you've got to get your act together and sort out a proper lawyer, and fight this thing so you can give your children – all four of them – the future they deserve.

You'd better get up.

:::::::

Starbucks is crowded, but you've got a table in the corner by the window. You're emptying sachets of sugar into your black coffee, and as the third one goes in you imagine the reprimand you'd get from –

"You got a picture of Ste, Dad?"

"What?" You stare at Declan. What the fuck?

"A picture of Ste. You are still with him, right? You haven't screwed up again?"

"What? No. Yeah, we're still... What d'you want to see a picture for?"

"You got one on your phone, yeah? Send it to me, so I can show Laura."

"Show _Laura_?"

"Laura's his _girlfriend_," Padraig informs you, and he spoons a tower of froth from his hot chocolate into his mouth.

"Yeah, I guessed that, but what... what you wanna show her a picture of Steven for, Declan?"

"She's asked me before, so."

"She's... You've told her, about..?" Jesus.

"Yeah. Girls like it, don't they? Some of them, anyhow."

"_Like_ it? Like what?"

"You know, fellas... with fellas. Girls like it. She liked, you know, Chryed or whatever."

"What's 'Chryed'?" you and Padraig both ask together, and you're relieved you're not the only one who hasn't got a clue what Declan is talking about.

"Some, like, soap opera thing." Declan's cool has evaporated; he's fidgeting and pink-cheeked, and you guess that whatever he's talking about – and you're none the wiser – isn't something that a lad his age feels he ought to know about. "Dad, have you got a picture or not?"

"Yeah."

You get your phone out and open its gallery. Not much of a gallery: you've got other pictures of Steven, but they're saved as drafts in your email where they'd be harder for anyone to see by accident. This one here is of the two of you, taken in the brief window between Steven coming back to you and Seamus showing up, when for a night and a day, nothing was wrong. He's smiling in it, carefree, and it makes you smile, and so does the picture of Cheryl next to it, but you stop smiling when the video on that same page catches your eye. It's the one Simon Walker sent you, and you haven't played it since but how you think of it is, that it's a suicide note. That's how you have to think of it, or you'd never rest. You don't know why you keep it – as evidence, maybe, that he came after you – evidence you could defend yourself with, or others can defend you with if you're gone.

"Dad?"

You select the picture of you and Steven, and show it to your sons.

"This one okay?" you ask Declan. "It's both of us, but..."

He nods, so you send it to him and he forwards it to his girlfriend.

:::::::

It's getting close to the time Eileen said she wanted the boys home, and you haven't told them about the court case. You and Declan have finished your coffees and Danish, and Padraig has nearly finished his.

"Listen, lads. Listen, I got to let you know something that's..." Fuck. You need to get a grip. "I got to go to court for something, lads, okay, something I didn't do but I been charged with it, so. It's gonna get sorted, I promise, yeah? But it looks like there'll be a trial – and that's a good thing, cos that's how I'm gonna clear my name. I just wanted you to hear it from me, then you'll know if you hear anything, you'll know what the true story is."

"What did they say you did?" Padraig asks.

"They reckon I assaulted someone. Like, beat someone up."

Declan looks at you coolly, and you remember him walking in on you once when you were half way through giving Steven a battering.

"Why do they think you did it?" he asks.

"Because he says I did – the fella that got beat up. He was working for me, and I had to sack him, see, and next thing I know I'm being arrested. Someone assaulted him, and I guess it's sour grapes that's made him say it was me."

"I don't get it," Padraig says. "Why's he let the real person get away with it? They could do it again to him."

"That's a good question," you tell him, and it's one you'd like the answer to yourself. "I don't know what's going on in his head, but all's you need to know is I didn't touch him, and the jury's gonna have to believe me cos there ain't a shred of evidence. Okay?" You look at Padraig and he nods his head. "Declan?"

He shrugs.

You drive them home and at the door, you tell them you'll see them soon. Padraig hugs you and lets you kiss him. You think you'll be lucky to get a goodbye from Declan, but just when you think he's going to go indoors he turns back to you, and he looks like the child you remember.

"You're not going to prison though, no?" he says.

"Not if I can help it," you tell him. "Come here."

He does what you ask, and he lets himself be held for a moment in your arms before he straightens up and says, "See ya, Dad," and goes into the house.

Eileen's there, and you ask her if you can have a word, and she comes out onto the doorstep and pulls the door to behind her.

"You know this trial," you say to her, "It's not gonna be for a few weeks yet. So I was thinking, Easter holidays, I'd like to have the boys over – "

"Brendan – "

"I'd come and fetch them, bring them back after a few days, give you... give you and Michael a break. They'd like it. Padraig's not met Steven yet, Deccy gets on great with him, you know he does. Just for a few days, Eileen."

"I'm sorry, Brendan, but with this assault thing going on, I'm not having my boys staying with you. It's not safe, is it?"

"Jesus, what... what you trying to say?" Jesus. Does she think that you would – ?

"Come on, Bren, you know what people are like with... you know, sex offenders – "

"I'm not a – "

"I know you're not, but it only takes one person to think there's no smoke without fire and you'll have a brick through your window. I'm sorry, Brendan, but I'm not letting my kids run the risk."

Okay. You see her point.

"After, then. After it's sorted – then will you let them?"

"I don't know. Maybe in the summer holidays, if it's all blown over by then."

"That's months away."

"It's the best I can do." She steps forward and offers her cheek, and you kiss it. "Goodbye, Brendan. Look after yourself."

:::::::

You've an hour or so before you have to be at the ferry port. You finish packing your bag and check out of the hotel, and drive.

What Eileen said is on your mind; how she _was_ with you is on your mind. Last week she seemed to be taking your word for it that you were innocent of the charges against you, but today she was back-pedalling wasn't she? You'd thought she was getting to see that you could be in your sons' lives, but now it's all _if_s and _maybe_s. You'd thought she would back you up if it came to it, tell the boys that you weren't guilty even if a jury said you were, but you've opened your eyes now and it's obvious she wouldn't. She's got form for letting them think the worst of you: years of it, and you can't blame her, but you can't rely on her either.

This is a long shot, but you're desperate. You park up, and sit for a minute. You don't even know if Macca still lives here – he's probably moved in with that rich fella of his – never mind if he's home, so instead of going and ringing the door, you get your phone out and call him. He answers straight away, "Brendan?"

"Where are you?" you ask him.

"Where – ? I'm at home. Why, what's going on?"

"Home's the same place as before or what?"

"Yeah, same place, but I don't – "

"I'm outside. Can I come up?"

There's a pause, and you get out of the car and walk up to the doorway to the flats, because you know his answer before he says it: "Okay," and the intercom hums and clicks to let you in.

His flat door is open when you get up the stairs. Macca looks suspicious, wary, but he tries to cover it up: "You look better than last time I saw you, at any rate," he says, and you remember how more than a year ago you'd turned up on his doorstep, battered and broken, just released from prison after Silas Blissett got caught for the crimes you'd been accused of.

"Yeah, well, prison don't agree with me. Thought you liked the beard though, no?" you say, but he's too nervous to laugh. "You on your own, son?"

"Yeah, I'm going out though in a minute so – "

"I understand congratulations are in order." Do you sound sarcastic? You don't mean to, but old habits...

"Who told you?"

"Padraig." You cross the room and look out of the window.

Macca stays where he is, as if he's ready to run out the door if he needs to.

"Right," he says. "Well, I'm happy, okay, so I don't care what you think. What are you doing here, Brendan?"

"Came to see the kids, didn't I."

"I don't mean that – I knew that. I mean, _here_."

"Need a favour. You see my boys, don't you?"

"Aye, yeah, now and again."

"I want you to... I need you to make sure they..." You've got to tell the story again, and it doesn't get any easier, and you suddenly wonder if Macca will disbelieve you and you'll have wasted your time and spread the story further for good measure.

"You wanna sit down, Bren?" He perches himself on the arm of a chair, and you sit on the couch.

You take a breath, and just say it.

"I been charged with assaulting someone, and there's most likely gonna be a trial. It's a pack of lies but if it... if it doesn't go my way, I need someone to make sure my boys believe I didn't do it. And you know what Eileen's like." You remember the phrase she used. "She'll think there's no smoke without fire. I can't have my kids thinking I did it, Macca, okay, not a sexual assault."

"My god."

"I've told them about the ABH, but not the, you know..."

"And you didn't do it?"

"Course I fucking didn't. Jesus. Do you think I'd do that?"

"You didn't do any of it? The ABH either?"

"No." You were right, why would you expect him of all people to believe you? "Look, son, I know I... I been, you know, violent, but not this time, not this lad. He's made it up, beginning to end."

"You and him, were you..?"

"What? No, never. I'm... I'm with Steven now, it's... There's no one else. Listen, I been getting along with the kids, and if I get sent down for this, I'll be back to square one, and if they think I'm a... if they think I did this, I won't stand a chance with them."

"Swear to me you never did it."

"I'm telling you. Alright, I swear, on my boys' lives. Think about it, Macca, all the times I... all the things I did to you, did I ever do anything like that?"

"No." He's silent for a minute – and so are you – and then he says, "So, you want me to tell Dec and Paddy that you're innocent, whatever the court says. Is that it?"

"Yes. I need someone to. Not just for me, but for them, see, if a lad thinks his dad's a... sex attacker, he's gonna think... he's gonna wonder if the same thing's inside of him, and I can't have that thought in my boys' heads. It'll eat them up, make them... I can't have that."

"Okay."

"You'll do it?"

"Yeah."

You stand up.

"I appreciate that, Macca. I didn't know who else to..."

"It's okay. You heading off, then?"

"Getting the ferry tonight, so." You head for the door. "So, Liam, is it? Thought you'd be living with him by now."

"I'm gonna, in a couple of weeks." He smiles. "Then we'll see if we still want to get married."

"He treat you right?"

"Course, yeah."

"I... I'm happy for you."

"Really?" He frowns at you, sceptical. "Thought you'd be funny about, you know, _queers_ getting married."

You shrug, look at the floor. "You find the right person though, why wouldn't you wanna make it, you know..."

"Official?"

"Yeah... Public."

Macca looks at you as if he's never seen you before. You open the door to go out.

"So long then, Brendan. Good luck with..."

"Thanks." You pull him into a rough and awkward hug, and then you leave.

:::::::

By the time you get home in the morning, Steven has left for work. You're relieved, in a way: you remember the cold shoulder he gave you last time you got back from Ireland, for spending that time away from him without so much as a text, and you've done the same again. You're an idiot, a fucking, fucking idiot, and he has every right to be mad at you, only you can't face his anger just yet. You crash out on the bed and get some sleep to make up for the bad night you've just spent on the ferry.

When you wake up, you feel better. Being back in this flat, in your own bed, makes you feel more like yourself. You needed to go to see your sons, and to escape the eyes you felt were on you at every turn before you left here. It was a necessary retreat. But you were dislocated when you were away, unable to do anything practical to help your cause; you've been drifting, and that has to end now. You get up, take a bath, have a shave, trim your moustache. You get dressed in a suit. You feel in the bottom of the wardrobe for a brown padded envelope, and take out a couple of grand which you shove into the pocket of your coat. Then you drive into town to get a haircut.

Your luck is in when you drive back into the village: you run into just the man you were after, the lawyer, McGinn. He's the one that got Mercedes McQueen off a charge that should have stuck to her, and never mind that from what you've heard, he came up with the wildest alternative story to spin to the jury, the bottom line is that he did his job against the odds.

You hand him the cash and tell him he's hired. Details can wait though, because you can see over his shoulder through the window of the deli that Steven is in there, and Cheryl is with him.

You go in. They're making a cake together, apparently.

Both of them come scurrying out from the back when they see you. Steven asks where you've been, and you tell him it doesn't matter because you're back now.

He's subdued, after that initial rush. "Wonder how long you're sticking around for this time," he says, and his expression is dark.

You've hurt him again. You'd rather he was angry than this damaged resentment. Cheryl hugs you, and then tells you to do the same to him, and you will if he'll let you; you approach him gingerly as you would a cat that might scratch. Only before you get close to him, you hear the door open behind you and you look to see who it is, and it's Seamus.

He's glad you're back and facing up to it all, he says. All you give him back is sarcasm, because you don't want his approval or his praise. He turns then: "You might not want my support, but there may come a time you need it. All of it."

You don't know what he means, and the undercurrent disturbs you. You don't show it, though.

"Sounds like I'm in trouble, Dad."

"He's just concerned about you," Cheryl says to you. "We all have been." She's oblivious, but that's how you've always wanted her to be when it comes to your dad. The truth would destroy her.

"Right, can I get you anything, Seamus, or..?" Steven's tone is rudely dismissive, and you love him for it.

When your dad goes, Cheryl tells you he's just trying to reach out to you, but you tell her you don't need him.

"I got all the loyalty I want, right here. I'm back in control."

"D'you want me to go," Cheryl asks, "And leave you boys to catch up?"

"No," Steven says. "Not if you want these cakes to get made."

"I'll... I'd better get to the club then," you say, "See if it's still in one piece."

"Yeah, you do that." Steven's voice is hard-edged.

"Hey, not until I see that hug," your sister says.

You go to him, circle him with your arms, and his arms wrap around your neck, but it's mechanical: his body is rigid, resistant, and you know he must be thinking the same about yours.

:::::::

The club is dead. The books reveal the worst turnover you've ever seen. Maxine's gone missing, off to see Anne in the States apparently, although no one seems all that sure, but anyhow the skeleton staff that's left has barely had enough to do.

It's a waste of time being here, but you've got nowhere else to be.

You've had time to think about what your dad said. _You might not want my support, but there may __come a time you need it. All of it. _It was a reminder, you've realised. He was reminding you that he was a witness to you threatening to kill Kevin. He saw you with the kid shoved up against the wall here in the club. He saw Kevin run off, and he saw you go out a minute later, and what he was doing in his little show of support in the deli, with a smile, was reminding you of the power he has – to tell, or not to tell; to tell the whole truth, or some of it, or an embellished version that lands you deeper in the shit. _You know where I am_, he said, and you wonder. You wonder what price he has in mind for his silence.

You want to go and see Steven again. You've missed him. You're missing him now, and you want to tell him you're sorry for leaving him on his own, but you know it's better to let him come to you, and you hope he will.

It's around the time that he usually finishes work, and you're passing the time messing about behind the bar, thinking up a new cocktail. You pour it from the shaker into a glass as you hear his footsteps on the stairs. He looks around at the empty bar, and you tell him – and you tell yourself – that once you clear your name, business will pick up.

"Are you gonna stop shutting me out in the mean time?" He's got that expression on his face that says, wearily, _Here we are again_. You've been here too many times when you've hurt him, disappointed him, but here he is, giving you another chance.

He sits down on a bar stool.

"I invented a new cocktail." You slide the glass towards him. "It's called _Sorry Steven_. It's got healing powers." You walk out from behind the bar to stand beside him, as he leans over his drink and sips it without lifting the glass like a child might. You owe him an explanation. "I just needed to keep my distance from it all, you know?"

He says he thought you were in this together; he says he's going to come to the hearing with you, he's going to take as much time off work as he needs to; he says Kevin's just a little street rat. He's saying all the right things, but there's a voice in your head that tells you he's dissembling, that tells you you're on your own in this life because that's what always happens in the end. So you're alert for it, for anything that confirms what that voice is whispering to you, and it comes. Of course it comes.

He's telling you what he reckons happened with Kevin.

"Right, you rejected him, and he ran off into the night." He looks away from you then, and he hesitates. "Probably got beat up, off a dealer, or a pimp, or some lowlife that he hangs about with."

"_Probably_." You look at him, wait for him to say something, but he's mute. "You know, I can do this on my own, Steven, if there's even a seed of doubt in your head."

You wait again for him to recover his voice, and when he does it's to say the thing that used to terrify you, and then came to mean everything to you, and now sounds like a tactic: "I love you, Brendan."

That's not what you asked, and you tell him so, and he calls you paranoid, and he says you need to stop pushing him out because it's working. And you see it working, as he ups and leaves you.

Fuck.

The moment he's gone, you feel the loss of him, raw and eviscerating.

:::::::

The odd few punters have drifted in as the evening's gone on, but you need more than a few to generate an atmosphere that makes them want to stay, and that's not happening. Tuesday nights are never great, and in the present circumstances there's no chance.

You give it til half ten, and then you turn off the music and get rid of the handful of customers and send the last barmaid home, then you lock up and walk home.

Steven is sat on the couch watching tv, hugging a cushion in front of him. He looks surprised to see you; you wonder if his surprise is because you're early, or because you've come home at all.

"What you watching?" you ask.

"Dunno."

"Must be fascinating." You watch him watching the screen for a minute, and then you go to the television and switch it off.

"Oi, I was watching that."

"No you weren't. Look, Steven, we... we need to talk about this, you know, about – "

"_Talk_? You? That's a joke, innit."

"I'm trying, for chrissake."

"What, going off for over a week, and not even sending me a text, that's trying, is it? Cos it dun't feel like it from where I'm sitting, Brendan, right, it feels like you don't want me around but you've not got the guts to tell me."

"Like _I_ don't want _you_ around? You didn't exactly greet me with open arms today, did you? But why would you, hm? When all's you can say is, _probably_ someone else beat Kevin up."

"You're doing it again," he says, and he chucks the cushion aside, gets up, stands square in front of you. "I've been on my own, Brendan, with people asking me where you've gone, if you've done a runner. Asking me if we've split up, right, and I didn't know what to say, did I, cos we might've split up for all I knew. So d'you know what I been doing, do you? I been defending you. Yeah, I been saying _No, course he's not run off, he's done nothing to be ashamed of_. And then you come back, and I tell you I'm standing by you, and all the things I say to you, right, and all you can do is pick on _probably_. It's just one word, Brendan. It might be the wrong word, I don't know, I'm not clever, am I. But I'm here, and I've been here all the fucking, fucking time, and that's what matters, or I thought it was."

He's full of fire. He looks as if everything he has is going into sustaining the flame, and you're frightened for what will be left when it stops burning: he seems fragile, ephemeral, and it's your fault.

"Steven. I just... I need you to be with me on this."

The fire's gone. His eyes are wide, and there are tears on the brink of falling.

"So why d'you keep pushing me away?"

You don't know the answer until you hear yourself say it: "Because you're better off without me."

"I'm not. I'm not, though."

You turn from him, go into the kitchen and grab the Jameson's bottle out of the cupboard, but there's nothing but dregs left in it.

"Fuck." You put it down and go and get your coat off the hook.

"Where you going now?" He follows you to the door.

"Get some whiskey."

"We've got beer here. If you go now, right... I mean it, Brendan, if you go now... Look, stay and have a beer with me, yeah? Please."

You hang your coat back up. You don't know what his ultimatum was going to be and you don't want to know; whatever it was, you can't take the risk.

He goes and gets two bottles of beer from the fridge, opens them, and as he passes one to you his hand is shaking.

You both go and sit down on the couch, but you're not touching, and it feels odd because you're always touching. You listen as he gulps down his beer, and you take a swig of yours.

"I shoulda called you. When I was away, I shoulda called."

"Where was you, anyway?"

"Belfast."

"The whole time?"

"Yeah. Seeing the kids."

"They okay?"

"Yeah, they're... Eileen won't let me see them again though, not til this is over, maybe not even then, I dunno." Fuck. "Sorry, Steven, I didn't... How are Leah and Lucas, you getting anywhere with Amy or..?"

"No. I mean, I been talking to them, but Amy won't let me see them, no."

"I thought maybe with me away, you might've – "

"Yeah well, it didn't make any difference, did it? Cos I couldn't tell her you weren't here, cos she would've asked why, and if I told her you was up on them charges that would be my kids gone for ever, wouldn't it."

"Sorry."

He shrugs. "Nothing we can do about it, mate."

"Is that what we are now? _Mates_?"

You look at each other, and your history rushes in on you, and you think he's remembering it too, all of it: it's in his eyes, the war and the peace, the hate and the love.

"No," he says, "We've never been mates," and he smiles the first smile you've seen on him since the moment before you got arrested.

"So what are we, then?" you ask.

"Dunno. But we... we _belong_ together, don't we? Or what are we even doing here?"

You don't know if he belongs with you – if you've any right to require him to, or if you've a right to allow him to even if that's what he says he wants. But you ache for him.

You take the bottle from his hand and set it down, alongside yours on the coffee table. He leans towards you expecting a kiss, but you get to your feet.

"Stand up," you tell him, and he looks quizzically at you, then does as he's told. "Come on." You walk to the bedroom, and he follows you inside. He reaches up to you, and you step back from him: "No. Don't move."

"What? What you on about, Brendan?" He half smiles, like he knows there's a game going on but he doesn't know what it is.

"Don't talk." You take his chin in your hand and examine his face.

"You're off your head, you."

"Ssh." You press your thumb against his lips. "I said, don't talk."

He must have changed when he got home, because he's wearing jeans now not his work trousers, and he's got on a track suit top which is zipped all the way up, and a hoodie, open, over that. Is it cold? He must have been cold, though you've told him not to worry about the heating bills any more since you've moved in.

You walk round behind him and you slip the hoodie off, down over his shoulders and off over his hands, and you throw it into a corner. Then you slide your hands under his arms from behind and feel for the zip at his throat and unzip it a few inches, and pull the collar aside with your fingers and kiss the side of his neck. He squirms a little, lets out a laugh that's barely more than a breath, and inclines his neck around your kiss. "Don't move, I said," you tell him, and he straightens his head back up. You breathe on his nape as you move around to kiss the other side of his neck below his ear. The scent of him wakes up your senses, and your balls tighten.

You go around to the front again.

"Close your eyes."

He doesn't at first, but you out-stare him, and his eyes shut, and his mouth opens. You can hear him breathing.

Slowly you finish unzipping his top, and as it falls open you feel the heat from his body coming through his white T-shirt. You push the jacket off his shoulders, and as you remove it you run your thumbnails down his arms and he shivers. You throw it on the floor. You pick up his arm by the wrist and you lick from his racing pulse to the crook of his elbow, and then you pull up the short sleeve of his T-shirt and kiss the skin there. You do the same to the other arm but you scrape it with your teeth, and bite the point of his shoulder.

You step close to him, and you're crotch to crotch as you unbutton and unzip his jeans. He tilts his chin up, moistens his lips with the tip of his tongue, and you tell him, "Don't move, Steven." The jeans are low on his hips as it is, so it doesn't take much for them to slip down to his ankles. You get down on your knees, stroke all the way down his legs, feel their rough hair under your palms. You make him lift his foot up – he has to clutch your shoulder to stop himself toppling over, but you'll let that one pass – and you pull the jeans over his foot, and then take his sock off. He gets his balance and lifts the other foot himself, and you get rid of the jeans and the other sock. While you're down there, you look at the tell tale bulge in his boxers, and you lick the stretched fabric before standing up again.

He's still got his eyes closed.

You drag his T-shirt up his stomach; it bunches across his chest, and you pull it over his head, bringing his arms with it. As it comes off, his arms flop loosely back to his sides. "Good lad." You go behind his back, and run one finger down his spine, feeling each bump of his vertebrae. When you reach his boxers you slip your finger inside the waistband and slide it down til you feel his rim, which flinches and tightens reflexively at your touch.

You stand in front of him again, not touching but close enough that he can feel your breath on his face. His face fascinates you, the heavy brows, the long, thick eyelashes; cheekbones that make you understand the term _chiselled_, because how were they made except by a sculptor with an ideal in his head? The lips. The mole on his cheek: you touch it with the tip of your finger and he's startled into opening his eyes, and as you see them focus, you wonder what expression he's caught on your face. Maybe it's that – _wonder_.

"Shut your eyes."

The lashes fall again, and display themselves against his skin.

You reach behind him, hook your thumbs inside his boxers, and slowly pull them down and let them drop to his feet; and then you stand back.

His breathing is ragged now, his chest rising and falling erratically. His fingers twitch, the only sign of his – what? Embarrassment, maybe, but his cock isn't embarrassed, it's emphatically erect, and your own is straining in response.

When did you become okay with this? When did you accept that it's not the chase and the conquest of a man that thrills you and fulfils you, but the man himself, the masculinity? That it's not what you do with him, but what he _is_: the musculature, the flat planes of his body, the strength of his hands, the hairs on his legs, the gristly jut of his Adam's apple – all the things that declare his _maleness. _You are okay with this, and you don't know when it happened, but you know how. He is the how.

You pull back the bed cover and return to him, and you pick him up, one arm around his back, the other under his knees, and you carry him naked to the bed and lie him on it, and part his legs. You place your hand flat on his chest for a moment to feel his heartbeat, and then you take his head gently in your hands and turn it to the side so he's facing you when you say, "Open your eyes," and you stand and undress as he watches you.

You climb on to the bed and kneel between his legs; you lean over him, your hands on the mattress either side of his shoulders, and you whisper in his ear, "Now. Now, you can move."

He's grabbing your head, pulling you down to him and himself up to you. You've missed this mouth of his, its hunger for you, its brazenness: this is more like fucking than kissing, all heat and darkness and invasion, a shocking physical metaphor that you feel in your groin.

He breaks the kiss to spit the words, "Fuck you," into your mouth, and then, "Fuck me." He stretches out a hand to indicate the lube on the bedside table, and you reach for it and give it to him. You sit back on your heels, and he sits up in front of you, his legs either side of you, and he squirts out too much lube into the palm of his hand; it oozes through his fingers and drips onto your thigh. He rubs his hands together then he takes hold of your cock and coats it, tip to root. The cold wetness makes you hotter.

You grip his waist and lift him onto your knees. He winds his arms around your neck and his legs behind your back, and slides himself up your thighs til your cocks are trapped together between your bodies, and he writhes and rubs as you kiss and bite his lips, his neck, his shoulder. His tongue dips into your ear. And when you can't stand any more waiting, you raise him up, and he clings to you with one arm, and reaches behind himself with his other hand, delves between his legs for your cock, and manoeuvres it inside him.

He links his hands behind your neck and leans back, sliding down your shaft til he's right on your lap and you're buried in him, and you hold onto his buttocks and feel him clench them, and you feel his ring tighten, and you're being squeezed to death and to life, and you can hear your voice, strangled and incoherent, words not sentences, "Fuck... Bastard, you bastard... Jesus... fucking... fucking little bitch... _Fuck_." He rides you long and hard, and your fingers and thumbs dig into him where you clutch his hips, deep enough to bruise.

You're going to come. You get hold of his wrists to unmesh his hands from the back of your neck, and you lower him away from you so his shoulders almost – but don't quite – touch the bed. You thrust into him, kneeling up as you do it. He yelps, and his legs tighten their grip around you, and his head jerks back as a stream of cum jets out of him and rains onto his belly. You thrust twice more, and the inside of your skull turns scarlet and white as you empty yourself into him.

You let him fall from you. You untangle his legs from around you, and you bend over him and kiss and lick the sticky residue of cum from his stomach, then you retrieve the cover and pull it over you both as you lie down beside him. He faces you and you kiss him, and he curls around you, his nails grazing your back. You stroke his arse, and let your fingers slide into his crack which is still slippery with traces of lube; you push a finger into him and meet no resistance. He bites his lip at the sudden sensation, and then you bite his lip for him.

"You belong to me, Steven, don't you." It's not a question, because you know it's true – you have staked your claim to every inch of him – but still you want his answer. "You belong to me, yeah?"

"Yeah." He kisses you, his tongue sweeping across your teeth.

He belongs to you. There's another question though, and it's one that you don't want to ask yourself because you don't want to think about the answer: he belongs to you, but does he belong _with_ you?

You push him onto his back again, comb your fingers through his hair. He looks up at you, and his lips part into a smile, and you kiss him until you lose yourself in him again. He belongs to you, and he possesses you.


	17. Chapter 17

You feel the warmth of him before you open your eyes, the warmth you craved for those eleven nights away from him in Ireland.

It's early, but it's light enough to see him now. He's lying on his stomach, his head turned towards you, his mouth open; at the corners of his lips and just below them, the skin is reddened slightly from your stubble. There's a darkened spot on the pillow where he's drooled in his sleep, and his breathing is loud – not so loud that you could accuse him of snoring, like he accuses you, but louder than usual for him. Sometimes in the night, you hold your breath and listen til you catch the sound of his breaths, in the grip of an irrational fear that he's slipped away, when all you'd have to do would be to touch him to know that he was only sleeping.

You sit up, and as gently as you can you lift the cover and move it off him, and you run your eyes over his body. The skin on his back is smooth and honey-coloured. There are faint pink marks on his shoulder from your teeth, and at the tops of his buttocks there are dark, distinct bruises where your fingers dug into him as he rode you last night. You imprinted yourself on him, and he knew what you were doing, and he frowned and cursed you but let you do it, bucking and writhing so you tightened your grip.

You're not breathing. It's not that you're holding your breath; it's that he's taken it away.

He shifts, feels for the cover in his sleep, and you pull it over him again and tuck it around him.

:::::::

He's gone on ahead of you to work. You were distracted, speaking with your barrister on the phone and arranging to meet him later, so you leave home a little while after Steven, and by the time you get into the village he's opening up the deli. You don't go in though, and you don't hear what your sister is saying to you as she and Nate come down the steps from her place, because you're looking at your club, and at what's been scrawled in white paint all over the doors. _SEX ABUSER. ROT IN JAIL. PERVERT._

This is a nightmare that you're not waking up from. Your lack of control frightens you, things are being done to you that you feel powerless to stop, and you feel overwhelmed. And then Steven is beside you, and you ask him, demanding, "Jesus, Steven, didn't you see it? Didn't you – " but then you glance at him and he looks shocked, and why the fuck are you turning on him, when it's the rest of the fucking world that's against you, and it's him that's beside you?

"I just come to work, didn't I, I didn't even look over the road," he says, and you can see that he's stung, but he shakes it off and he says, "Right, maybe we can scrub it off, it's worth a go, but I reckon we'll have to paint over it. There's some of that grey paint in the cellar, in't there? Brendan? From when we had that graffiti before, remember?" You look at him dumbly, and he carries on, "Well it's there unless you've thrown it away. Give us the keys."

Then he organises them – Cheryl and Nate and himself – with buckets and scrubbing brushes and paint and paintbrushes, and they get to work trying to make the writing go away, and all you can do is watch as your boyfriend tries to make things better. He's a practical man, Steven is. An angry man too.

"Who'd do this?" he asks you, full of indignation.

"Take your pick."

Your sister tells you that you've got nothing to be ashamed of, and Steven says it'll all blow over soon and you can get back to being normal. Right now, _normal_ seems to you an impossible dream. And your day just keeps getting better: your father turns up, like he has a knack of doing when he's not wanted, and he says the kind of thing that decent, God fearing people say on these occasions: "Whoever did this should rot in jail. Feckless scumbags."

"I don't need your help," you tell him, and you turn and start to go, but Cheryl and Steven come after you: she says you need all the support you can get; he says you can't storm off every time your dad so much as looks at you. But you weren't storming off, you were removing yourself because if you'd stayed you'd have wanted to ask Seamus, _Whoever did what?_ _The paint job or the act it's accusing me of?_ _How do you square it in your head, Dad, this taking of the moral high ground on a thing like this, when you know what you did to me? _And if you'd said that to him, right there in front of your sister and your lover, the whole house of cards would have come tumbling down_. _See if Cheryl still thinks you're all Team Brady after that.

Steven makes a decision. Tonight you're going to shut the door on everything, and he's going to cook you a special meal, and it's going to be just you and him. Cheryl gives him a cuddle and tells you that you've got a special one here. You know it. You tell him yes.

You wish it was that easy, shutting the door on all of this, but you and him are under threat. You stride over to the door of the flats where Kevin Foster is staying with Maxine and press the buzzer, because you need to put a stop to it. You don't know what you're going to say if he lets you in, what you're going to do, but you don't find out because you look back at your dad, and he's staring at you as if you're confirming everything he thinks he knows about you; so you prove him wrong and walk away.

:::::::

You meet with Jim McGinn down by the river. He's been working on his brief since yesterday, going through the evidence the prosecution reckon they've got. What you want from him is some good news, and that's what he gives you at first: he tells you the Crown doesn't have a hope in hell of proving the sexual assault because there's no evidence whatsoever, so you can forget about that. Only the next thing he tells you is not so good. There's the photographic evidence of Kevin's injuries, and if you put that together with his testimony and the fact that you don't have a credible alibi, you'd need a miracle to get off the violence charge.

"Plead guilty to ABH," he advises. "You'll get a softer sentence."

This can't be happening – this is not what you're paying this lawyer for. You tell him you don't want any sentence. Your anger rises but gives way to a tight knot of fear, and you say to him – and you feel as if your voice is going to crack and betray your weakness – "Look, I can't be wrongfully done again. I can't go back to prison, it would kill me and Steven. I can't."

"I'll do my utmost to make sure that does not happen."

What if his utmost is not enough? You ask him if there's anyone he knows who'll take money to make sure this goes your way. You'll pay all the money you've got, you'll sell everything you own, you'll start again from scratch if that's what it takes to stop you and Steven being torn from each other. McGinn won't cooperate though, he says you've got to play this by the rules; but you can't take that chance.

You head back to the club. The graffiti has gone from the doors, covered over with fresh paint, but you know it's there below the surface and you think you will always see it.

You let yourself in and run upstairs to the office. You open the safe and shovel thirty-five grand in cash into a brown envelope. This has got to work: a lad like Kevin will understand the language of money, and it'll speak louder to him than the voice in his sick little head that's making him seek revenge on you for sacking him or for rejecting him or whatever the fuck it's about.

You step out of the office, and there's a welcoming committee. Cheryl and Nate, all smiles and uncorking a bottle of Champagne; Steven, hanging back near the bar like he knows that whatever this ambush is in aid of, it's not a good idea; Seamus, hands in pockets, appraising you. You hide the envelope behind your back, and you listen to your sister as she tells you that they're here – a family gathering, she calls it – to toast her and Nate getting engaged. That's what she was telling you this morning when she saw you in the village, just as you spotted the graffiti, so the moment was spoilt for her, and you get that she wants to enjoy her moment, but not now. Not now.

She holds a glass out to you but you don't take it. You stutter out some kind of excuse: you need to keep a clear head, you've got work to do, but she's hurt. She doesn't want her day ruined by bad vibes or a funny atmosphere, she says, and then Seamus joins in and backs her up, of course, and he comes towards you like he wants to embrace you. You shrink from him, and Cheryl can't fail to notice.

"A small goodwill gesture, you know," she says to you. "I'm not asking you guys to kiss and make up, babe."

Your dad holds out his hand to you, but you can't do it, not even for Cheryl. You can't have him touch you.

You walk between them to the bar and pick up the Champagne bottle. You tell them you can do better than this: a proper party, tomorrow, after you get out of court; a party that means something. You glance at Steven and that's enough to tell you that he sees through you, he knows your sudden act of bonhomie is artificial. He sees it for the manic defensiveness that it is, and he's scared for you. As you head for the stairs he tries to talk to you, "Brendan," but you say, "Not now, Steven," and you go.

:::::::

Kevin is crying.

You're in his flat and he's all alone. His words are big – he's never going to change his statement, you can't touch him or your sentence will be doubled – but you can smell his fear, and he's crying.

You put the fear of God into him, and then you show him the money. He asks what he's got to do to earn it, and you tell him he has to withdraw his lies and he has to confess that it was all about getting his own back on you after you sacked him.

"Is that it?" he asks.

"And then you disappear, out of my life, for good."

He nods, says he can do that. Can he? You tell him it's a one-off payment; you're not having him joining the other enemies in that corner of your mind where the the threat of their return keeps you awake if you let it. You spell it out: if he ever comes back looking for more, you will kill him.

"I'll vanish," he says, and he's backed away from you til there's nowhere to go, and he's got the kind of terror in him that tells you he already knows what it's like to be cornered, threatened, beaten: you recognise it. "I promise, I promise I'll go."

You have no pity. Your blood is cold.

You ram your fist into his stomach. He doubles over with the shock of it, but he doesn't scream. They don't, do they? When experience tells them that no help will come, they don't scream. Then Kevin straightens up and presses his back against the wall, eyes shut, as if he's waiting for more

"That's for saying I sexually assaulted you," you tell him. Your second punch floors him: "So was that."

As you walk out you hear him begin to sob, and you feel nothing.

:::::::

They're gone when you go back to the club. Cheryl is with Nate, you guess, and that's as it should be. You're glad she's marrying him: he's a good man, you think, and you believe that he loves her – you're able to spot the real thing these days – and that he has the strength to look after her, a viable alternative to Seamus even in Cheryl's eyes.

Steven's in the deli, you looked over there as you left Kevin's place just to make sure he didn't see you. Your dad's probably in the bookies or down the pub.

You stay and work for a while. You're on autopilot and your mind is elsewhere, wondering if Kevin has gone to the police yet. You feel in limbo, half way between believing you've sorted this thing at last, and not believing it until you hear it. There's no euphoria, and you doubt there will be, because anyone you meet might still see you as a sex attacker even when the charge has been dropped, just like that writing is still there on the doors even though it's been painted over.

You go out onto the fire escape, and when you look down at the deli you see that it's closed. Must be later than you thought, and when you check the time you see that Steven will have finished work about an hour ago. He'll be expecting you home, for this special meal he's cooking.

As you walk home, you consider whether to tell him about paying Kevin to retract his statement, and you're surprised that it isn't really a question in your mind. In the past you'd have lied or at least kept quiet about a thing like that, and hoped it wouldn't come back to haunt you. But now? Now, you're going to be straight with him.

He's in the kitchen when you get in, still in his work clothes, standing at the cooker. The smell of frying onions fills the place.

"I got you a steak," he says. "Won't be a minute, I know you like it mooing."

"Thank you."

He says he was going to ring you, and he'd had no idea what Cheryl was planning, that she was going to spring Seamus on you. He's chattering – no surprise there – but there's a kind of brittle anxiety underneath it, as if he's not quite sure that you've repaired what you have together since you came back from Ireland, despite the sex you had last night; and you're not sure either. He's not _comfortable_ with you, and you'd never have thought that that was something you would aspire to, but apparently it is.

Maybe there's no subtext though, and you're just being paranoid. He hands you a beer, and he asks you if you're okay about court tomorrow, and maybe that's it, that's his worry: he's worried for you, about how you're coping with the pressure.

"Feel better for speaking to your barrister?" he asks.

You bite the bullet.

"I feel better for paying Kevin off."

"What?" Steven looks stunned.

"It's gonna be okay now."

He's disbelieving, angry. He says Kevin's just going to tell the police, and you tell him no, he's not, and then he says, "It's like you're admitting that you're guilty."

"To who?"

"Everyone," he says.

You tell him that you've got it covered, but he's sceptical, and anyhow it doesn't make any difference because now you know where you stand. When he said _everyone_, that wasn't what he meant. He meant _him_, you've admitted it to him, and there you have it: Steven thinks you're guilty.

"You don't believe I'm innocent, do you? Huh?" He doesn't answer, but he looks away from you, so you push him. "You think it's guilt money, don't you? Every time I ask you if you believe me, there's always a hesitation, a look away, a change of subject. So, say it, Steven. Say you don't believe me. Say you think I'm capable of the same – "

The window smashes, a brick straight through it from outside in the dark. You grab Steven, pull him out of the way. Then you run out of the front door. There's no one there but still you shout, challenge them to come and deal with you face to face, but they've vanished into thin air.

Steven has followed you out.

"Brendan, come back inside."

"Why should I even listen to you when you don't even hear me, Steven?" You're yelling at him. "I paid Kevin off for you, for us."

He looks at you, shakes his head as if you disgust and disappoint him, and goes back into the flat.

You look around, walk up and down the street. There's a bunch of lads on the corner, smoking, and it could have been any one of them, only as you approach them you can't sense any adrenalin in them, and there would be if they'd done it. In the distance someone catches your eye, running, but when they pass under a street lamp you can see that it's just a jogger. You're kidding yourself of you think the perpetrator is hanging around waiting for you to find them, so you turn around and head home.

The front door is ajar when you get there, and your heart misses a beat.

Steven is in the kitchen.

"Fucksake, Steven, what you leave the door open for? Anyone coulda walked in, anyone coulda – "

"It was only you though, weren't it. Must be my lucky day."

"There's a fucking headcase out there lobbing bricks through the window, for chrissake."

You watch Steven tipping the steak into the bin.

"There was glass in it," he says without looking at you. "I've phoned someone to do the window, I had to give them your credit card number or they wouldn't come out tonight."

He's been through your pockets, then, to find your card. You wonder why he didn't use his own – was he looking for an excuse to search your things? You don't ask him, though. It's trivial, when you've got another question hanging thickly in the air between you, the question you were asking when the window got smashed: does he really think you're capable of sexual assault?

"Okay," you say. "When they coming?"

"Now," he says. "Soon as."

He's cleared up the debris from the surfaces and now he's sweeping up the kitchen floor with a dustpan and brush.

"You just gonna stand there?" he asks, and he looks up at you, his face darkly resentful.

"What do you want me to do?"

"I dunno, just help. Or just... just get lost and let me do it."

You're going to take the second option, but then there are lights from a vehicle outside and a moment later, a knock on the door. You answer it, and it's the glazier. He looks at the window frame, measures it up, goes to his van to cut a pane to size.

You and Steven don't exchange a word while you're waiting, but when the guy starts fitting the new glass, Steven goes outside and you can hear them chatting. When it's done they both come back inside, and you authorise the payment, and you're dreading the guy going because then it'll just be you and Steven and a resumption of hostilities. When he does go, the first thing you do is pick up your beer and drain the bottle in one.

"So, you gonna say it?" you ask Steven.

"Say what?"

"Say that you think I'm guilty."

"What's even the point of talking about this, eh? I'm bored of it, Brendan." He opens the oven and looks inside. "I can reheat the chips, they're probably still alright, but we'll have to have sausages now."

You get another beer from the fridge, and go and switch on the television.

:::::::

You've eaten together, side by side on the couch, in virtual silence. You're angry, with him for not seeing that you paid off Kevin because you wanted to protect what you've got with Steven, and with yourself for not predicting this reaction. You're on edge about tomorrow, too, and you will be until you get the news officially that the case has been dropped. You check your phone, but there's no message from McGinn.

You pick up your plate and Steven's and take them to the kitchen.

"Thanks for that," you say when you return. "It was..."

"I wanted it to be special. Just one night when we could shut the door and be, like, normal. I must be stupid thinking that was gonna happen."

"I didn't throw that brick, Steven."

"Yeah, well," he says, and he stands up, "You might as well've done."

"What you saying?" You know what he's saying: he's saying all the shit that happens in his life is because you're in it.

"Nothing, Brendan."

He's looking at you, all insolence and bravado, but you can see beneath the veneer the damaged boy that he is, and the guilt you feel threatens to twist into rage.

"_Nothing_? Come on, Steven, say what you're thinking, yeah? You didn't get no broken windows when Douglas was here, ain't that what you want to say?" You're toe to toe now, snarling in his face. "So go on, if you want me to go, just say it."

"Shut up, Brendan."

"Never get a straight answer from you, boy, do I, hm?"

"You're paranoid, you are."

"See what I mean?"

He shoves you then, with both hands on your chest, and the surprise of it sends you staggering back from him. You recover, step towards him and shove him in return. He falls back onto the couch but gets up straight away and comes at you; you wrestle for a moment and get hold of his arm and twist it up behind his back.

"Get off me!" he says. You hold him until he stops struggling, then you let him go. He rubs his wrist and glares at you. "Thought you was tired of being angry," he says. "That's a joke, innit."

"That was before your legal system decided to persecute me." You battle with your temper and bring it under control.

"It's _prosecute_," he says, then doubts himself. "In't it?"

"It's both."

"Right." He shrugs, not understanding. "What do you mean, _my_ legal system, anyway?"

"Yours. The British."

"You're making it sound like we're on different sides."

"Aren't we?"

He shakes his head, and walks past you, out of the room.

"Don't walk away from me, Steven."

"Or what?" he says, and he's still rubbing his arm. "I'm just going to the toilet, or do I have to ask permission now?"

Fuck. You're getting everything wrong. You're pushing him away, just like he said you were trying to do; you're fighting him – making him fight you – when he'd be by your side if you'd let him.

When he comes out of the bathroom he goes straight to the bedroom. You turn off the tv and do the same, bathroom then bedroom. He's still dressed when you join him, putting clothes away, and he glances at you when you walk in. You sit on the bed and take off your shoes and socks; when you stand up again, he's standing at his side of the bed, unbuttoning his shirt. You watch him take it off, and as you pull your sweater off he pulls off his T-shirt. You undo your trousers and step out of them, and your boxers, and he does the same. You try to meet his eyes, but he doesn't look up. You go and switch off the light, then get into bed and lie on your back. Steven gets in too, leaving a dead strip of no man's land down the centre of the mattress.

You lie there, listening to him breathing. After a while you stop hearing it, but when you hold your breath you can hear it again straight away, and you realise that the only reason you couldn't make it out was that it had fallen into sync with your own.

You turn your head to the side to look at him. He's awake and staring at the ceiling, you can see a glint in his eyes from the light that's coming in from the hallway where the bedroom door is an inch or two open.

"You not even gonna say goodnight now, no?" you ask.

"Why, are you?" he says.

"Jesus. Everything's a fucking argument with you, ain't it?"

"With _me_? That's a joke."

You sit up, elbows on your knees, head in your hands.

"What am I meant to do, Steven? What am I meant to say to you? I'm sorry, okay, I'm sorry I paid off Kevin, I'm sorry I thought it's the only way to make this bullshit court case go away, I'm sorry it's made you think I'm guilty, I'm – "

"Made you _look_ guilty, I said. See, you're doing it again, you're just hearing what you want to hear, right, just cos you're so bloody insecure that – "

"Fuck you."

"I'm right though, aren't I?"

"Fuck you, Steven, don't try and fucking psychoanalyse me." He's right about you: you don't have any idea what it feels like to be secure, but you don't need to hear it. Fuck him and his insight. Fuck him.

"I don't wanna fight any more, Brendan, right. I don't wanna fight you."

"Don't you?" Your blood is up, and you're not open to appeasement.

"No."

You reach for his face and turn it towards you. He hits your hand away, and you pounce: you rip the cover off him, grab his arms around his biceps and hold them down as you straddle him.

"Don't want a fight?"

"Fuck off," he says, and he struggles fiercely.

Straddling him was a mistake, because his knee comes up and hits your back, so you manoeuvre yourself until you're kneeling between his legs. He's looking up at you, his nostrils flared. He looks like something wild and undiscovered.

You're leaning over him, your weight taken by your hands as they press his arms down into the mattress. It feels as if time is standing still in this impasse, as you lock eyes and wonder if he'll give you a sign.

A little of the tension leaves his body – you feel it go – and his gaze slides from your eyes to your mouth. You start to lower yourself towards him, but you see his jaw lock and his lips close tightly together, and it's obvious he won't kiss you back if you try to kiss him, so you don't.

"Want me to let you go?" you ask into his face, and he nods. "You gonna behave yourself?"

"Bastard, who d'you think you are?"

You laugh at that, and kneel up and let go of him. He's motionless for a moment, and then he reaches up and grabs you and pulls you down to lie on him. His kisses are vicious, all teeth and spit and choking tongue. He twists and undulates beneath you like a scrapping cat, and he scratches too – his finger nails are short, but they don't feel it as they score stinging welts in the skin of your back – until you pin him down again, gripping his wrists tightly enough to cut off the blood. His hands curl into fists.

Your cock is hard, and you press it against his thigh to make sure he knows it. The eyes that look up at you are provocative and knowing. He knows what he does to you, how he's under your skin.

He cranes his neck, trying to reach up to kiss you. Does he think you're about to let him go again? You don't loosen your grip, but you lean closer and you stick out your tongue, and he mirrors you, straining up to you until the tips of your tongues meet, and then he flops his head back down onto the pillow. His fists unclench, and his eyes close a little, his eyelashes fluttering like a geisha's. He breathes through his mouth, and his teeth shine. His legs rub against you. It's a display of docility that doesn't fool you for even a moment, and you know he's conning you, or trying to. This boy is not a placid lover: even his submission is demanding, his surrender a command to do what you want, because he knows that what you want is the same as what he wants.

You move so that your cock nudges between his legs. You're not going to release his wrists, but that means you don't have a hand free to feel for his hole, and neither does he to guide you, so your dick slides blindly under him until he bends his knees and tilts his pelvis up, and he finds you. You feel the pre-cum ooze out of you as your tip teases his rim, and that's all the lubricant he's going to get. If he doesn't like it, he'd better let you know.

You watch his face as you break into him; he frowns and screws his eyes shut, and his mouth forms an _O_ and he makes a noise in his throat, but his ring widens for you, and you barely need to push as the inside of his body spasms and ripples to draw you in. He clenches and jerks, his heels under your arse pulling you deeper.

"Look at me," you tell him. His eyes stay shut so you have to say it again, "Steven, look at me, let me see you," and you get his obedience by tightening your grip on his wrists, making him cry out. Then you don't look away from each other as you lock and rock together, testing each movement, each thrust, each shift, reading in each other's eyes every tipping point from pleasure to pain. He takes all of you, and you drive into him, lifting his hips off the bed with your force.

He screams when he comes, and you cry out too as his insides shudder and grab you, and you feel his cum hit your belly and slide and drip onto his. You drag yourself out of him, let go of his wrists and kneel over him so when you finish yourself off with your hand, you come over his chest and neck and chin.

You look down at him as you sit up and get your breath back. His arms are still where they were when you let them go, and even in the almost-darkness you can see that his wrists are red. He's panting, and covered in sweat and mess. He looks ruined.

He looks beautiful.

He realises you're staring at him, and it disconcerts him, and after a moment or two he says, "You alright?"

"Was that... was that okay? You're okay, Steven, yeah?"

He looks puzzled.

"Course, yeah. Why, didn't you – ?"

"Just, you know, if I... if I went too far – "

"I'd stop you, wouldn't I?" He sits up in front of you, rests his hands on your shoulders. "Brendan, I know I can stop you. Okay?"

"I love you."

"Don't push me away, then," he says, and the outside world comes crashing back into the room.

"You wouldn't get bricks through your window if I – "

"_Our_ window. It's our window, Bren. Come here." He wraps his arms around your neck, and kisses below your ear. "I get it, I get why you done it, you know, paying Kevin off. I don't agree with it, right, but I know you thought it was the answer. I just... it just scares me, you know, cos if the police find out..."

"Can't you just trust me, Steven?" You make him sit back from you. "I'll hear in the morning that there's no case no more, and then we'll, you know, there'll be nothing stopping us from..."

He looks away.

"Let's just see what happens tomorrow."


	18. Chapter 18

"Can't you sleep?" Steven's voice is soft in the darkness; you shake your head, and he asks, "You been to sleep at all?"

"No. Dunno... Don't think so."

He has, though. He fell into that post-fuck sleep of his that's as sudden and as heavy as a child's. You could pick him up, you think, when he's unconscious like that, and carry him away somewhere, and he wouldn't wake if you did.

"You're worrying about tomorrow," he says. "It's gonna be okay, Brendan, we'll get through it, we always get through things."

"Today. Not tomorrow, it's... It's morning, ain't it."

He reaches across you and picks up your watch, and peers at it.

"It's only half two."

You feel your breath hitch in your throat.

He settles back under your arm, his head on your shoulder. He smells of you, and your mind snaps back to the sex you had, your cum spattering over him to scent-mark him as yours, the grip of your hands burning and branding his wrists.

"You're okay, boy, yeah?"

"I will be, long as you are." He's stroking your stomach, your chest.

You won't be okay until you hear officially that Kevin has retracted his statement and the case has been dropped, and you hope to god that the hearing will then be abandoned and there'll be no formalities to go through. The thought of still having to stand and listen to those charges being read to a court full of people makes you sweat.

You don't know what to say to reassure Steven, so you say nothing, but you run your hand down his forearm from his elbow to his hand as it rests on your stomach, and you slip your thumb beneath his palm. His fingers close around it, and both your hands together rise and fall with your breathing.

You think he might be falling asleep again, but then he says, "Brendan, you know at Lynsey's funeral? What were them words that you said? That Irish thing. Under the... under the something..."

"Shelter. Ar scáth a chéile a mhaireann na daoine. Under the shelter of each other – "

"People survive. You just got to remember that, right, not try and push people away that care about you."

You remember how he helped you survive after Lynsey died, even though he had no reason to. Maybe he's right about your paranoia: maybe he doesn't doubt you as much as you think he does, maybe he's with you still.

You stroke the back of his hand with your fingers, and you tell him, "Go back to sleep."

"You've got to get some sleep too, Brendan." He's quiet for a minute, and he must be thinking of something he can do that might help, because then he says, "Want me to suck you off?"

You almost laugh, and you tell him, "No. I just..."

You just want him to kiss you like he means it, like he loves you after all. And that's what he does. All his sharpness has gone, the teeth and claws and truculence that he showed you before; he's soft now from the closeness of sleep, the angles of his limbs relaxed and moulded against you, his lips warm as they press against yours, his tongue yielding. His eyes are closed, and he'll be asleep again soon, and you think you will be too.

:::::::

It's light when you wake up.

You lift his head gently with your hand, slide your arm out from under it, and lower it onto the pillow, then you ease out of bed and cover him over. You touch his hair.

There are no messages when you check your phone, but that's okay, you don't think lawyers start work this early.

You brush your teeth and shave while the bath is running. Your face in the mirror looks grey: you think you look twice the age of that boy you've just left in bed.

As you get into the bath, the hot water stings your back where Steven's finger nails grazed your skin last night. You take a deep breath, and you slip under the water and lie submerged, listening to the rushing of your circulation, and breathing out a slow stream of bubbles as your sinuses begin to hurt.

There's a hand on your knee. Fuck. You sit up, sending a tidal wave over the edge of the bath.

"Jesus, Steven. Wanna give me a heart attack? Fucksake."

"I thought you was... You was under the water, I thought..."

"Jesus."

"Sorry."

"It's okay." You rub the water out of your eyes. "If I'm gonna go, Steven, it ain't by drowning in a fucking bath tub."

"Jim rang," he says. "He's meeting us at the club."

"What he say? He heard from the police?"

"He just said he wants to go through what's gonna happen this afternoon, you know, about how you're gonna plead."

"So it's still... they ain't dropped the charges yet." Kevin is cutting it fine: what's his game?

"Leave the water, I'll get in after you," Steven says, and when you stand up and step out he hands you a towel. He drops his dressing gown on the floor and clambers into the bath, and Jesus, there's nothing of him.

You dry yourself off, and then you take the dressing gown and leave him the towel, and go back to the bedroom.

You've just finished doing your hair when your phone rings, and it's Cheryl, calling to wish you luck. She says she'll come to the court with you – Team Brady, she says – but you tell her no. If the hearing is going ahead you don't want an audience.

"Anyways, you got an engagement party to organise," you say to her.

"Are you sure about that, Bren? We don't have to do that now, not while you're..."

"I said we'd do it, didn't I? I need... I need you to be happy, Chez, okay? You and Nate, I need to know that he's... that he's gonna take care of you. So you're gonna have that party, and you're gonna get married and you're gonna have that new life that you deserve. You and him."

"Are you okay, Bren?"

"Course. You know me."

"And if we have this party tonight, you'll be there, won't you?"

"Try stopping me."

You're sitting on the bed with your head in your hands when Steven comes into the room. He gets dressed quickly, then he tells you he's going to cook breakfast. You're not hungry, but he says you've got to eat something.

You put on a black shirt and the trousers of a suit, and you hang the jacket on a hook in the hallway then follow Steven to the kitchen. He's got the frying pan going and he leaves it and comes to you, runs his hands over your chest to smooth your shirt, and straightens your collar.

"Johnny Cash," he says.

"What? What about him?"

"The Man in Black. That's you."

You're surprised he remembers you telling him that, the nickname of a singer he's barely heard of.

"You do listen to me sometimes, then," you say, and immediately you regret it because it sounded like a dig, and he shakes his head and moves away from you, hurt.

You touch the small of his back as he's putting the breakfast on the plates.

You find that you can eat after all, and he's the one that barely picks at his food. You're aware of his eyes on you while you're eating.

:::::::

He's at work, and you're at the club. You're on tenterhooks waiting for news, and it takes all your willpower to stop yourself going and hammering on Kevin's door to see if he's gone yet. You re-read the letter from the court summoning you to the hearing today. _Sexual assault contrary to section 3 (1) of the Sexual Offences Act 2003_. The words are dry and formal but their implications are anything but: they tear away your foundations and paint you black.

You sweep the files and clutter from the top of your desk onto the floor in frustration, and you're going to trash the whole fucking place but you're stopped by the sound of someone banging on the door downstairs. It's Jim McGinn, come for his meeting with you, and Steven has come across the road to join you.

You're expecting McGinn to tell you it's over, but when you say to him, "Well?" what he says is, "Just want to go through a couple of things, make sure we're both singing from the same hymn sheet in court."

"What?"

"Sorry, what I mean is, we're both agreed on what we talked about yesterday. It's a not guilty on the sexual assault, and a guilty on the ABH. Then we'll – "

"You kidding me?" You start walking away from him, back up the stairs, and he and Steven follow you. "No. I'm not pleading guilty to something that I didn't do. It's bad enough that I have to stand there in court and listen to them accuse me of... of sexual assault – do you want me to put my _name_ to that? Are you kidding me?"

"No," McGinn says, "Just the actual bodily harm."

"It's the same difference," you shout at him. Why can't he see what you're saying, that you didn't fucking do it, that if you admit to one part of it you may as well be admitting to all of it? You tell him you can't understand why it's still going to court, why Kevin hasn't changed his statement, but McGinn's baffled that you'd think that might happen.

Steven comes to you, trying to calm you down you guess. He says you're going to have to give evidence.

You don't understand how this is still happening.

"I paid him off," you say to Steven. "He took good money off me to drop his lies."

McGinn is shocked, says he didn't hear you say that, as if knowing what you did will compromise his professional integrity, when he's the one that's telling you to lie to the court by saying you're guilty.

Steven shuts him up and turns back to you.

"You just have to think about what's best in the long run, yeah?"

"Plead guilty to ABH," McGinn says. "You may only serve twelve months. If you go down for sexual assault, you're looking at a longer sentence, and the sex offenders' register. Your life won't be the same again."

"See, it's the right thing to do," Steven says, but you saw his face when the lawyer said _twelve months_: he looked like he'd been punched. "Right, and I'll come with you for support."

"No. No, I don't want anyone there."

"Look, please." He's hurt, but you can't think about that now.

Steven asks you where you're going as you head down the stairs, and you say you're going to find Kevin. McGinn calls after you, telling you that you can't intimidate a witness.

"Watch me," you yell at him, and you run out of the club and over to the door of the flats. You ring the bell, and the bells of the other two flats, and you pound on the door, but there's no answer. You stand back and look up at the windows but there's no sign of anyone – well there wouldn't be, would there? And then you turn and see Steven in the doorway of the club and he shakes his head, so you walk away.

You don't know where to look for Kevin, so you end up walking aimlessly around. You go into College Coffee, wanting to ask in there if anyone's seen him, but Cheryl and Nate are there, and Seamus is sat cosying up to them, so you duck out before one of them sees you.

In the state you're in, the sight of your dad with your sister only serves to stoke your anger. The sooner Cheryl's safely with Nate and away from the old man, the better.

If Kevin hasn't disappeared with your money, he's got to be lying low in Maxine's flat. He's got to be, or you're fucked. So you go back there, and this time you get lucky: some girl is coming out of the entrance – Cindy's daughter, is it? – and you catch the door before it closes. She gives you a dirty look but lets it go. You run up the stairs to Maxine's door and you rap on it with your knuckles, and you shout for Kevin to open up.

He opens the door and you barge into the flat.

"Look, if you touch me, I will go straight to the police," he says.

"That's what you were supposed to do, Kevin!" You're screaming at him. "Go to the police, sort this mess out." You gave him money, you remind him, you had a deal.

"I don't know what you're talking about."

What the fuck? And you're kicking furniture and you're hitting doors, and you don't know why it's not him that you're kicking and hitting, except that if you started you don't think you'd stop til he was dead at your feet

You can't look at him. You turn your back. There's nothing about this that makes sense, nothing. You want answers, but you're losing your grip, you can feel yourself on the edge of breaking down.

"Sexual assault. Why? _Why_? The people that... the _monsters_ that do that, that's... that's not me, that's not what I do." You're exhausted for a moment, and you turn back to the kid and he's saying something, something about if you hurt him he'll go into court and... and what? "I'm going down anyways," you tell him, "Might as well have me some fun," and you've thrown him onto the sofa and you're on top of him, and if you're going to get sent down for ABH you may as well be guilty.

"Brendan!"

Steven's here. You jump off the kid, and you look at your boyfriend. He looks horrified, and he looks... he looks as if he's just found out the truth. Fuck. You're ashamed when you see what you've made him think.

He composes himself, resists laying in to you in front of Kevin. "Jim's still at the club," he tells you, and it's like he can't stand to look at you. "You need to go and finish your meeting."

You front it out with Kevin, say to him, "To be continued," then you leave. Steven follows you down the stairs and over to the club, and you feel his disapproval. You stop at the door and you say, "I can take it from here, Steven." You chance a glance at him, and his face is clouded with anxiety; you look away.

"I saw Cheryl before," he says. His voice is tight. "She's having that party, but it's at the Dog instead of here. She wanted you to know."

"Okay."

"Are you gonna, you know, do what Jim said? Plead guilty to the ABH?"

"I ain't guilty."

"But he said though, Brendan, it's for the sentence, he thinks it's gonna be worse if you say you're not guilty and they find you guilty anyway."

"You want me to do what he says? What, it's okay for you to ignore him about how to get your kids back, but I've gotta do as he says and take a twelve month sentence?"

"But if you go away for even longer..." He looks frightened.

"I won't."

"You don't know that. Look, Brendan, let me come with you today, right, you shouldn't be doing this on your own, you're not..."

"What? I'm not what?"

"Coping."

You hear yourself gasp, and it's almost a sob.

"I can't... I can't have you there, Steven, I can't. When they..." When they read out your name, and read out that charge, you can't have him there. It's indelible, something like that. Your name in the same breath as that thing they say you've done – anyone hears that, they're not going to forget it. "Promise me you'll stay away."

He says nothing at first, then he nods.

"You'll ring me soon as it's over though, yeah? And then, we'll have a drink at the Dog, right, and we'll forget about it for tonight, okay?"

"Okay." You attempt a smile, and he shocks you by taking your face in his hands and kissing you.

McGinn is waiting upstairs for you. You barely say a word as he talks you through the procedure, checks that you've got some ID with you, reiterates his advice and tells you that without the mitigation of pleading guilty you could be looking at five years for the ABH. That fact rocks you: how could you expect Steven still to be there when you got out, even if you only served half of it? A year apart is pushing it, and already when you've spent that long apart he's found someone else to be with; any longer, and what hope would you have? The way McGinn tells it, you don't have a hope in hell of convincing a jury you didn't do it.

He's still badgering you as you leave the club and get into his car. You think you're going to have to agree to his strategy, but you don't answer.

As the car moves off, you look across at the deli, and Steven is standing outside; he gives you a thumbs up and mouths the words _Good luck_. Douglas is by his side.

:::::::

He's there. Seamus: he's there, walking into the public gallery just as you walk into the dock. He's come to see you declared to be what he thinks you are.

"Brendan Seamus Brady, you are charged with two offences. The first charge is sexual assault, in that on the twenty-seventh of February two thousand and thirteen you intentionally touched Kevin Foster, the touching was sexual, Kevin Foster did not consent, and you did not reasonably believe that he consented..." and as the Clerk goes on, you're looking at your dad, staring at him, but his mask doesn't slip. _The touching was sexual... did not consent... you did not reasonably believe that he consented..._

"Not guilty," you say. There's one man in this court who's guilty, and it's not you.

The second charge is put to you, the actual bodily harm.

"How do you plead: guilty or not guilty?"

McGinn is looking at you, confident now that you're on board with his strategy, but you're not. You're not going to lie down and take this, you're not going to do what you're told through fear of something worse. You're going to take the power back.

"Not guilty."

When you look at Seamus again, you don't know what to make of his expression, and you try and decipher it. Maybe he thinks you are a fool, or a liar. Maybe he thinks you're going to get what you deserve.

:::::::

"What is the point of retaining a barrister, when you're not going to act on his – my – advice?" McGinn is furious with you.

You're in the car park outside the court.

"What is the point of me retaining a barrister, _Mr_ McGinn, if he's gonna tell me to get myself sent down for something I didn't do?"

"You're missing the point. You're going to be tried on _both_ the charges now, and Kevin Foster is going to say that the reason you beat him up was because he rejected your sexual advance. The whole point of pleading guilty to the ABH was so we could present you as an honest man with a temper, not a pervert with a sadistic streak. I just can't – "

"What? I thought the whole point was to get a lesser sentence cos they were gonna find me guilty anyway. Jesus..."

"That was only part of it, if you'd listened to what I was telling you. I honestly, honestly don't know how we're going to do this now, now that you're going to be tried for the ABH as well. Juries, Mr Brady, they like things neat and tidy: two charges, two guilty verdicts."

"Or two _not_ guilty verdicts. Or what, the truth don't matter?"

McGinn is exasperated. "They'll believe you, or they'll believe Kevin," he says. "Obviously, I'll do everything I can to make them believe you, but frankly, if Kevin goes into the witness box looking like a frightened choirboy – which he will if the prosecution side is on its toes – we're in trouble."

He's got to stay at the court for another case, so he can't drive you home. Fine, whatever. You turn away, and you walk into Seamus.

"So, son, how do you think that went?"

"Bet you're happy, ain't you, Dad?"

"Happy watching the family name being dragged through the mud?" He comes up close, and speaks quietly. "I'm ashamed of you, Brendan. I thank God your mother isn't here to see what you are."

You clench your fists and round on him, but two security men start coming towards you from outside the entrance of the building.

You back down, and head for the nearest pub.

:::::::

You're already pissed when you get a taxi back to the village.

The club is closed. Well, it would be: who's going to open it up, and who's going to want to go to a club where the owner is... where the owner is you? You fumble with the keys, drop them, get the door open in the end.

There's no whiskey left behind either bar, so you unlock the cellar and go down the stairs. There are ghosts there, of a dead man whose life you took, and of a live one, who gave you life. You open a case of whiskey and pull a bottle out, take it back upstairs. You put some music on, and Johnny Cash's voice rumbles out of the sound system as you slump onto a couch, and drink.

_I wear this crown of thorns  
Upon my liar's chair _

Your phone has been off since you arrived at the court, and when you switch it on there are voicemails, from Cheryl and from Steven. They're worried about you; they hope you're okay; they're at the Dog, and they're missing you.

You fall asleep, and when you're woken up by your phone ringing – it's Cheryl again but you don't pick up – the same song has come around again, confronting you, vivisecting and describing you. You get up and stumble over to turn it off, but it makes no difference, because it has become implanted in your head.

_Full of broken thoughts  
I cannot repair _

You're half way down your bottle of whiskey, and maybe it's time you went and joined the party and toasted your baby sister's future, seeing as she's got one.

The pub is packed when you burst through its doors. You shout for Cheryl, where is she? There's a table in the way and you walk into it and you hear glass smash, but it's okay, you've still got your bottle in your hand. Jack Osborne comes at you, telling you to slow down – you don't know what his problem is because you haven't even started.

You see your sister and you smile as you go to her, but then you see your dad right there next to her, looking at you like you're the dirt on his shoe.

"Enjoy the show?" you say to him, and he shakes his head at you. "Enjoying the show?"

Someone's steering you away. It's Nate. You tell him to get his hands off you, but you let him take you outside, away from him in there.

He's funny, Nate is. He says he doesn't want to have to deck you at his own engagement party, and you kid him back, tell him maybe he could seeing as there's two of him. It's not much of a joke: your eyes really are out of focus, and you doubt you could take him in a fight right now. It's lucky that you don't want to. What you want is for this guy to stick around and take care of Cheryl, and stand between her and her father for the rest of their lives. You hug him, and while you're clinging on to him you fight to get your thoughts in order, because there's something that you need to make sure of.

You tell Nate that he's the best thing that's ever happened to your sister; you bring him a step or two further from the pub, and you face him, and you give him your blessing. And then you tell him that you need him to do you a favour.

"One thing. When you have kids – and they're boys – you keep them away from that man."

"That man – what? What are you saying?"

"He'll take their innocence."

Steven comes out then, hollering at you about ruining Cheryl's big night, saying he needs to sober you up. You tell him you're not going home, and he tries to drag you away but you won't let him, you go and sit down on the paving stones in front of the pub. Nate is looking over at you, and you can see in his eyes before he goes back inside that he has caught your meaning.

Telling him what you told him has shaken you up: the fact of telling him, so that now there are three people in the world, apart from you and apart from your dad, that know what was done to you; and the fact that you've had to dredge it all up again from that dark place inside you where you keep it hidden, and it's hurting again, and you are your dad's victim again. And when you're shaken up, you feel vulnerable, and when you feel vulnerable your control starts to slip away, and you're on the edge of something and you don't know which way you're going to fall.

Steven's sitting with you now, and he's asking you about court, about how it went, and you tell him you pleaded not guilty.

"You serious? But Jim said... he said it would be worse if you did that, didn't he? Did he change his mind or..?"

"_I_ changed my mind. Can we not talk about this now, Steven, hm?"

He gets to his feet, and heaves you up. You stagger as you start walking, and he grabs you. You tell him you want to go home now.

He takes the whiskey bottle from your hand and throws it into the water, and you ask him what he did that for.

He's pissed off with you. "Right, you go to court," he says, "You plead not guilty, then you go and get wasted."

"You trying to say something, Steven?"

"No, " he says and he starts walking again. "Come on."

You stop him, make him turn back to you, ask him again. He says he doesn't want to argue about this again, and you think, about what? What's the thing you've been arguing about ever since you got arrested? You won't let it go, and he's saying again he won't argue about it, and he's got his back to you so you can't judge what he's thinking. You've got to know though.

"Do you think I'm guilty, yes or no? Do you?"

He wheels around to face you.

"You know what? Yeah. I do think you're guilty."

All your anger has fallen away, and you feel as if your heart is being crushed in his fist.

"I didn't touch him."

"Well what about me, Brendan, eh? What about all the times you beat me up, over and over again, punch after punch?" The words are spilling out of him like he's been storing them up, and they're hitting you, punch after punch.

"I was different then." You've changed. He knows you have, doesn't he? You have changed.

"No, you sit there, and you go on about your dad hitting you, yeah, that it's this monster in your life, in your head, that you can't get rid of – "

"Don't say that." His words have shaken you, you feel vulnerable, your control starts to slip away. You're on the edge of something and you don't know which way you're going to fall. "Don't say that."

"Why? Cos you know what, that was you." There are tears in his eyes, of anger, and they're blinding him to the danger he's in, and he doesn't stop. "For so long, that was you inside my head. And then I see you like this, and it makes me realise, yeah, maybe you are just like your dad."

He's down, and you're on him. You're the monster he's named you as, and you're the abuser your dad thinks you are. You're guilty, you're going to prison and going to Hell. You're wired wrong. You're the watered down version, your father's son. You're the one with the power now, you're the one on top. You won't be weak and ruined and terrorised. There's chaos inside your head, and you are merciless.

Something has happened. There's a pain somewhere: your hand. It's bleeding. He's bleeding. It's Steven, and his face is bleeding, and someone's hurt him. Your hand, the hand with the blood on, is a fist.

_I hurt myself today  
To see if I still feel _

It's Steven. His face is bleeding, and someone has done this to him.

It can't have been you, though. You wouldn't have done that, not now. It can't be what it looks like, it can't be. It can't be as bad as it looks, because you've changed, and you wouldn't have done that, not to him. Not to Steven. If you'd done that to Steven, it would be over – you and him would be over. It can't be as bad as it looks, because it can't be over.

"Hey. Hey, you okay? I was only messing." You're telling him, and you're telling yourself, and he's rolling around on the ground and he's making noises like... like whimpering noises, like a child that's had something bad happen to him. "It was only a little punch. Don't be soft."

He looks up at you, and you're trying to help him, trying to pick him up, see if he's okay, but the way he's looking up at you, it's like he's scared, like you're going to hurt him.

"No," he says. _No_. And he scrambles to his feet and away from you. "Don't come near me."

You tell him, if he wipes away the blood it'll be as if it never happened, just wipe it all away. You reach out, touch him, and he reacts like you've burned him, jumps round and stares at you, and his eyes are... His eyes tell the story, and your heart stops.

You tell him you're sorry. Because you know now, you did this.

"I don't know what came over me, okay?" You're following him as he tries to escape from you. "Come on, I need you. Steven, please, don't walk away – "

Someone runs into you, almost knocks you off your feet. It's Maxine and she's asking for help, and this doesn't make sense. Your brain is sluggish, and nothing is connecting right. Maxine's in America isn't she? Wasn't she? She doesn't look like herself, and she can hardly stand.

You hold her, and she doesn't know you at first, but then she focuses and she says to you, "Brendan, you need to get away. He's back. Walker's back."

_Walker._

Your head is fucked and you feel as if you're in the middle of a nightmare. Things are happening that shouldn't be happening, you're hearing things that can't be true. But you feel the rain begin to fall and it's icy on your skin and suddenly you're sober.

You look up but Steven has gone. You could leave the girl and go after him but you need to know what she knows, and she's losing consciousness, so you half walk, half carry her back to the pub, and she collapses on the steps outside. You need her to talk.

"You have to go," she says. "If he finds you, he'll kill you."

You have to shake her to keep her from passing out. You ask her where Walker is, what he said, and she says she's sorry.

"What are you sorry about? What are you sorry about?"

"I believed him." Her skin is cold and pale as death.

"Who?"

"Kevin. He's working for him."

"No. Kevin? All of this was Walker? The charges against me, that was Walker, is that what you're telling me? That was Walker?"

She tells you, "Yes," but she's fading fast. You plead with her to stay with you, and she rallies to tell you to get away before he finds you. You're sorry, you tell her. You're sorry.

Jack and Darren have come out of the pub, and when Darren sees you he comes running down, yelling at you to get away from her. You tell him, you never touched her, and as you go you hear him asking her if you did this, and you hear her voice, faint, saying no.

You've got to think. Walker could be anywhere. You can't go after him because you don't know where to start, but you know him: you know what he's going to do next, even if you've been too stupid to work out that he has been pulling the strings. Maxine was wrong, he's not going to kill you, or not yet. Torture is his game, that's why he drugged Declan, that's why he pointed a gun at Steven, that's why – and now that you know it, you don't know why you didn't realise from the beginning – that boy Kevin turned up out of nowhere to torment you with the one thing that Walker knew would send you mad.

He knows where you are weak.

Cheryl's safe for now, he can't do anything to her in a pub full of people, so you can leave her while you go and find Steven. You're heading back to the centre of the village, trying to call Steven as you go but he doesn't pick up. Why would he? You get to your car, struggle to get it open, start to get in but then Cheryl's there. You don't know why she's here and not at her party, but it doesn't matter, you tell her to get in the car.

She argues with you, won't get in because you're wasted. Jesus, she can drive then, but still she's getting on at you, asking if you said something to Nate. And then you see that there are tears streaking her face, and she wants to know if you're trying to ruin her life, and you need to get her into the car and so you lie: you swear to God, you never said anything to Nate. It doesn't make any difference to her though, she's not playing ball, not until you tell her about Walker, that he's back, that the charges against you were down to him, that he's coming after you – all of you – and you've got to get as far away from here as humanly possible. Then she does what you say.

She starts the engine and asks, "Where are we going?"

"We're gonna find Steven."

"I thought he was with you. He went out after you, Brendan, I thought he was going to take you to sober up."

"He... he went off. Just drive, Chez, okay? We need to find him. Maybe he's gone home, I dunno. I don't know." You tell her about Maxine.

You're almost home, and Steven is there in the headlights. He sees you and he runs.

Cheryl gets out of the car and goes after him. You follow, and when you catch up with them outside the flats he has fallen onto the gravel path, curled into a ball, shaking in fear, and Cheryl is kneeling at his side and pulling him into her arms, horror in her voice as she asks him what happened.

"Was it Walker, did he find you? Was it Walker that did this to you?"

Steven looks up at you. His face is a mess of blood and tears and rain. He is broken.

"No," you tell your sister. "I did."

You don't dare try and help her get Steven up and into the flat: you can't bear to have him cringe away from you again, and in any case you doubt Cheryl will let you near him. You hang back and follow them in at a distance.

"We've got to go," you say to them. "You need... Steven, you need to grab what you need, okay, cos we've got to get away from here."

"He's not going anywhere," Cheryl says. "Look at him, he's frozen."

"He's got to. I've got to get you somewhere safe, both of you. Walker's not gonna sit around and wait if he knows we're onto him, so..."

Steven looks dazed, and Cheryl talks to him quietly and in simple words as if she's talking to a person in shock; that's what he is, you guess.

"Walker's come back, babe, and Brendan thinks he's going to try to hurt us. D'you understand?" She strokes his hair. "Come on, let's get you cleaned up, make you feel better before we do anything else." She steers him to the bathroom; neither of them looks at you.

There's no time. He could be outside right now, Walker, but you've got no choice but to wait while Cheryl does what she has to do. So that's what you do, you give them some space and you wait until you can't stand it any longer.

You knock on the bathroom door, but go in only as far as the doorway. They're both standing at the basin; Steven's got his back to you.

"If we don't get away," you say, "Walker..."

"Brendan," Cheryl says, and she looks and sounds wiped out as she shakes her head at you.

"What's Walker gonna do to me that you haven't already?" Steven's voice is flat, cold.

"He'll kill you, Steven, it's..."

He turns around then, and you see his face in the light for the first time. Now that Cheryl has wiped away the blood, it's done anything but wipe away what you've done. The skin is split at the outside corner of his left eyebrow, and along his right cheekbone. There are sabrasions on his cheeks and under his nose. His eyes are bruised and sore and empty.

"I'm dead inside anyway." He pushes past you and out of the room.

It was Walker that did this, he put you in this place and messed with your head, made you do things you wouldn't do in your right mind. You tell that to your sister, and you tell her that you should have known it was him all along, but she stops you. She takes hold of your left hand.

"Look at your hand. Take responsibility for your actions."

You don't want to see it but she won't let you off, and when you do look, what you see is your knuckles, red and swollen and stained with blood. You get a flashback to what you did, and it's like nothing you've done to him before: it was punch after punch, and there was nothing he could do to stop you.

_Try to kill it all away  
But I remember everything _

You did this. There's no one else to blame.

You've got to talk to him, although you don't know what you can say that will make this any better. How can you make him understand when you don't understand it yourself? You have to try though, so you leave Cheryl and go and look for him.

He's gone from the flat. You run outside the front door, but there's no sign of him.

You start off down the street but your sister calls you back, "Bren, he could be anywhere. Look, come back inside and we'll phone him, okay?"

She's right. You both go in, and she tries to get hold of him but the call goes to voicemail. You're agitated, knowing he's out there where anything could happen to him; you listen to her leaving him a message, and then you tell her to lock the doors and put out the lights and stay here while you go and find him.

:::::::

The fight-or-flight rush that sobered you up and kicked you into action at Maxine's words, has burned itself out. Your head is banging, it feels as if your brain is swelling and pressing against the inside of your skull above your eyes, and each time your foot hits the pavement as you run back towards the village there is a jolt of pain. You feel dehydrated, dry-mouthed and shaky. The urgency you feel is no longer fuelled by adrenalin: it's your willpower that's keeping you functioning now, fighting the slowness of your thoughts and your body's need to give up.

Where would he go?

You go up the steps, past Cheryl's place to the next door, and you ring and knock and shout for Steven and for Douglas, because Douglas would take him in, wouldn't he, and right now you'd give anything to find them there together. There's no answer.

You turn away and call Steven's number, and leave him a voicemail asking him to call you back.

As you get to the bottom of the steps, something catches your eye, something moving in the shadows, and you're not sure who or what it is so you walk towards it, look into the alleyway, and someone's there. You run, follow the shadow in the dark, but you're too late and there's no one to be seen. You walk back the way you came, and when you emerge from the alley again, the deli is right in front of you, and you are suddenly certain that that is where Steven has gone to hide from you. He'll have wanted to be by himself, won't he, he won't have gone to Douglas or to anyone else: he'll have wanted to lick his wounds where no one could look at him with pity and with judgement and with_ I told you so_ written in their eyes. He'll have wanted to be on his own with his shame, the evidence of his weakness on him in blood and bruises. But the shame and the weakness are yours, not his.

You peer in through the window but it's dark inside and you can't see him. Walker wouldn't see him either, and you hold on to the hope that he hasn't found Steven before you have. So you hammer on the door and shout to him. Is he in there? He's got to be, you can feel it, and you close your eyes and you pray to God, _Let him hear me._

"I can't lose you, can't... Not now," you say, and then a kind of anger rises up in you, and you beat on the door, yell at him to open up, but as soon as it's risen it's fallen away: all your energy has gone, and you're only still standing because this is life or death. The fog in your head is slowing your thoughts, but you try, you try and grasp hold of the thing that might reach him even through this door and through his fear and his confusion. That thing is honesty, and that's what you give him, dragging your pain from its hiding place and telling it to him. "_He_ did this to me," you say, but you don't – even now, you can't – name _him_. You tell Steven you don't know how to be normal, but you think you did, once, when you were a kid. "The world was... was beautiful, was... Then he took that away, he took... he took everything away and it changed..."

You're struggling to focus, and your defences are gone, and all you know is that you love Steven with every cell in your body, and you need him to hold you together but you know you've no right to expect him to.

_What have I become  
My sweetest friend?_

Haltingly, you find the words. "The things I love, I break them. He killed that... he killed that love inside of me, and... I can't get it back, I can't... I can't get it back without you. You make me... you make me understand, you make me believe that the world can be... can be good again. I can't do this without you."

You've got nothing left.

_Everyone I know goes away  
In the end _

You walk away. You've lost him, you've lost his love, but you're not giving up on him, you've still got to protect him while Walker's out there. Maybe if you bring Cheryl back here he'll listen to her, or...

"I can't trust you." Steven's voice arrests you, and you spin around to face him, and he's there in the rain, frail and scarred and beautiful. "I can't... I can't love you when you're like this."

He looks as if it's taking all his strength just to stand in front of you. His courage astonishes you. There are tears in his eyes but you can't see if they fall, because of the tears in your own.

"Let me keep you safe."

He doesn't speak for a moment, but then he nods and he says, "I'll go with Cheryl," and his eyes meet yours.

If that's all he can give you, you'll take it. You'll take him to safety then you'll let him go, and he'll live his life without you, and your life will be over and your hope will be gone but that's okay, because he matters more.

You start walking home, and he falls into step beside you but beyond reach.

_You are someone else  
I am still right here. _


	19. Chapter 19

"Brendan." It's your dad's voice. "Brendan. Wake up."

You're having a nightmare.

Are you? You can't be, because your head is throbbing, and it couldn't hurt like this if you were asleep. But if it's not a nightmare, that means your dad is really here, and he's waking you up like he used to do, and you can feel the heat of his body beside you.

You're not in bed, though. You're at Cheryl's place, and you're on the floor and you can't move, and as you regain consciousness the pieces of your memory smack back together, and you remember how you got here.

:::::::

"I'll go with Cheryl," he says, and his eyes meet yours.

He walks home with you. Neither of you says a word. You want to tell him about Kevin, that he was Walker's stooge and the whole thing about the assault was a set-up, but if you do, it will sound to Steven as if you are trying to turn his belief that you were guilty into mitigation for what you did to him tonight. It wasn't. It isn't: nothing can excuse what you did. Still you can't help hoping that Cheryl will explain it to him, so whatever else he thinks of you, he'll know the truth about that.

You're not looking at him, but the vision of his face is in front of you, broken and bereft, and you have to suppress it because you have to be alert to your surroundings. Walker could be anywhere, hiding in the darkness like he has for months now, and maybe tonight will be the night that you finally take that bullet – and you'll take it willingly, as long as you know Steven and Cheryl are safe.

There's a noise. You get between Steven and and the movement in the shadows where it's coming from, but what emerges is just an old stray dog that looks straight at you before it slopes off with whatever it has scavenged from a pile of rubbish sacks. Your mind is so fucked with alcohol and dread that you half think it could still be Walker: you wouldn't put shape-shifting past him.

When you get home, you shout through the door, "It's us," and you hear Cheryl slide the chain off before she opens up and lets you in. When she hugs Steven you feel it like a rebuke, but you've got no time to think about that because you've got to hurry them out of here. There's a hitch though, something you hadn't considered, and you don't want to consider it even when your sister tells you. She says Seamus isn't picking up his calls, she's worried and she wants you to go and get him, and you can't believe it – that because of your dad, you're going to be delayed getting these two to a safe place. You don't argue, because you won't win and you'll only be wasting valuable time, and in any case, how could you tell your sister that she doesn't need to worry about her dad because Walker will only go after the people you love?

You tell them to take the car, get out of the village and wait in the car park off the bypass. You'll meet them there once you've rounded Seamus up.

Cheryl gives you a kiss on her way out. Steven walks past you – he still hasn't said a word – and you think he's going to leave like that, but he stops in the doorway and you sense that he's turned around. You hardly dare look, but when you do, he's looking at you with something in his expression that makes you think that by some miracle, you haven't killed every feeling in him: that he's worried about leaving you.

"Go." You almost whisper it, and he hesitates still so you say it again, "Go. Go." You want to go with him – with them – but instead you've got to go and find the man you'd happily leave behind. Unbelievable.

You stand listening for the sound of the car doors slamming and the engine starting, and the noise fading to nothing as they drive away. A wave of relief almost knocks you off your feet, and you lean against the wall for a moment. Steven and Cheryl are out of danger for now, and Steven is smart, he'll spot if someone is following them so they won't be sitting ducks as they park up and wait for you.

You go for a piss, and you wash the blood off your knuckles. You go to the kitchen and take a couple of painkillers, chasing them down with a glass of water and then another. You find as much cash as you can, and then you lock up and go.

The rain has stopped and the night has turned cold.

You try calling your dad's number as you walk, but he doesn't answer.

You let yourself into Cheryl's place, and something doesn't feel right. There's silence, and an atmosphere.

"Dad?" you say, and you shut the door quietly. You walk slowly through towards the kitchen.

"Hallo." It's Walker, and he's pointing a gun at you. "Thought you'd never get here."

He moves the gun, points with it down to the floor under the stairs, and you approach to see what he's pointing at.

Seamus. He's sitting on the floor, his hands behind him tied to one of the struts that support the staircase, and this is some kind of game that Walker is playing, and you try to imagine what it could be but you draw a blank: he knows he can't break you by killing your dad, so what's he going to do? Killing you seems too simple after the torture he's been putting you through at arm's length. You look at him again, and he points the gun at your face. His hands are steady, and you're calm too. If you're going to die, you'll die knowing that Steven has got away.

Walker indicates you to turn around, and you do, and it's only when you feel the muzzle of the gun on the back of your head that your fear kicks in.

:::::::

"Brendan." It's your dad's voice. "Brendan. Wake up."

You weren't asleep, you were unconscious: you realise that as your memory returns, and you realise too that Walker must have knocked you out cold. At least he didn't shoot you.

Your dad is admonishing you for letting your guard down. You struggle against the ties that bind your wrists to the post, but they hold fast.

Walker has gone out, Seamus says. Looking for Steven and Cheryl, you guess, and you hope to god he won't know where to find them.

Your dad asks you what Walker wants with you, and you tell him that he wants to kill you, but that you reckon he doesn't care either way about Seamus.

There's nothing you can do but wait. You're not sure what you're tied up with, but it feels like some kind of flex, and all you know is that struggling only makes it tighter. Seamus has a penknife in his pocket – he always did, you remember that – but he can't get at it and neither can you, so you're stuck here, shoulder to shoulder with him. The minutes crawl by, and the longer Walker is gone, the more worried you are about Steven and Cheryl. If they stayed where you sent them they should be okay, but when you didn't arrive to meet them, it's likely that one or both of them will have come back to the village looking for you, and Walker could have got lucky.

It's almost a relief when you hear the front door open and close, and Walker is back.

"Well, isn't this nice," he says, breezy, and he squats down in front of you. "You two spending some quality father-son time together."

He's got Cheryl's necklace in his hand. Seamus asks if it's hers, but you know it is and you feel the hairs on the back of your neck stand up, and you say to Walker, "If you touch her or Steven..."

"Speaking of inappropriate touching," Walker says, and he somehow knows about the penknife and delves into your dad's pocket for it.

_Father-son time. Inappropriate touching._ His subtext is screaming at you. And now he wants to play truth or dare.

He's playing with his handgun, spinning it on the worktop like a game of spin the bottle, and he's spinning this out. Whatever the fuck this is, you want him to get on with it. Then he starts talking about Cheryl's screams, how they're loud enough to wake the dead.

"No, you're lying. You're lying." You struggle against your bonds but it's futile. "I'm gonna break you in half." You should have split him in half when you fucked him: you should have known he wasn't what he pretended to be – there must have been signs, and Christ, you should have recognised them – and you should have ended him then, and then Steven and your sister would be safe now.

He tells you to tell Seamus about Cam – Cameron, his dead brother. You're beginning to get what he's doing, that the game he's playing with you is one of sadism, and he's clever, Walker is, at sniffing out where you're vulnerable, where your secrets lie. He was never just going to kill you. Drawn-out suffering is what he wants for you, payback for what his brother went through and what Walker went through watching him, and he's been doing it for months and would have kept on doing it like that, you suspect, scything away every part of your life until you had nothing left. Would have, except Maxine got away and forced his hand. So here you all are, and he's had to bring this forward, this game he's playing now. The end game.

You tell the story of Cameron and his dodgy pills and his death. Walker asks how that made you feel, and you tell him it didn't make you feel anything because you don't even remember the boy: he was a no-mark. You turn the tables, ask Walker how that males _him_ feel. He starts laughing and you laugh back at him, and then he comes at you and sends you slumping over to the side with a blow to your head. Funny, you'd forgotten how much your head was hurting til now. You feel nauseous.

He helps you sit back up.

"What have you done with Cheryl and Steven?" you ask him, but he won't tell you of course. He's saving it. He wants you to keep talking to your dad – confession, that seems to be what he's after – and he asks you how many it's been now. It takes you a moment to figure out that he's talking about

kills, and another moment to decide there's no point trying to hide it from your dad. "You lose count after a while, don't you," you say.

"Yes, you do." He laughs again, and Seamus tells him he's a sick joke.

The truth round is over, and now it's time for a dare.

"I dare Brendan," Walker says, "To tell his dad who made you the man you are."

You feel as if you might throw up. For almost a quarter of a century this thing has been unspoken between you and your father. You've come close, lately: _Hard to believe, isn't it, Dad? That your son would be capable of such a thing_ – you remember saying that to him after you'd been charged with sexual assault. But always there's been a voice telling you that he'd deny it, make you a liar, make out it's all a twisted fantasy in your sick, sick head; a voice telling you to keep quiet because if he admits it, what are you meant to do then?

You've got no choice now, like you had no choice when you were a boy. It's going to have to be said now, just like things had to be done when you were a boy.

You try to scrape some advantage from this though, some bargain with your tormentor. "I need to know that Cheryl and Steven are safe first," you say.

"Okay," Walker says, but what he comes up with is a riddle. "Where they are is cold, and dark. One more thing... oh yes... they're running out of air. The clock is ticking, Brendan. The only way to save them is to play."

Cheryl's okay in the dark. It was you that needed a light on when you were a child, in case you woke up in the night and there was something in the shadows or in the corner, or in the doorway. Cheryl wasn't frightened like that. But if it's cold... Steven gets cold easily, there's nothing of him, not enough flesh on his bones to keep him warm. You hope that wherever they are, they're together. _Please God_, you think, _Please God let them be together._

"What d'you mean, running out of air? Where are they, hm? Where the fuck are they, Walker?"

"You shouldn't use language like that in front of your dad," he says, mock-offended, then he turns to Seamus. "But then, normal rules don't really apply with you and your son, do they?"

"What's he..?" Seamus says to you.

Walker smiles. He keeps fucking smiling. He's still smiling as he moves to sit down on the floor opposite you, but his smile fades as he fixes his eyes on your dad.

You wonder if Seamus is starting to realise that Walker knows what he did to you. He must be, mustn't he? Walker isn't exactly subtle, even if he thinks he is. Fleetingly, you fear what your dad will do when he knows you've betrayed his secret, but that fear is held at bay for now by bigger fears.

Walker tells you to look at your dad. He says that's where all the anger in you started, with Seamus. When he tells you to think back to what he did to you, it's projected in your mind like a twisted home movie, and your instinct is to close your eyes to block it out, but you don't because you know how it goes when this memory takes hold: close your eyes, and it intensifies, the smells and tastes come back to you, the colours become saturated; the red gets redder.

"Think back to what he did," Walker says, "And how you wondered why – cos you loved him. And he loved you... only, so much it hurt."

Your dad says he doesn't understand, but Walker does, he wants to help you, he wants you to feel how good it is to confront your demon.

You don't have the strength.

"Kill me," you say to Walker. "Just kill me, you know. Kill me, and it's all over."

"Tick tock."

He's said that before, months ago, and you almost lost your family. You didn't let it happen then, and you're not going to let it happen now. You're going to have to find the strength.

You ask him what he wants from you, and he must recognise that you're going to cooperate now because he says, "Good." And then he tells you, "I want to talk about Nana's house, and when you were little, and your daddy would come and pay you a visit."

You're trapped, helpless, and you can hear your dad's breathing and you can feel his eyes on you.

Simon's voice is gentle. He listened to you, didn't he? He believed you when you told him, and he can see what it did to you. He comes to you, tells you to think of how your life could have been, all the pain you've inflicted – and you see Steven, the life with him you almost had, and you see Steven, broken and crying in the rain.

Your dad says that whatever you've done, he's not to blame for it. But Simon thinks he is, and he's talking to him now. He's asking him how he could have done those things to an innocent little boy, and you tell him, "Stop." You don't want to hear this about yourself: how could that have been you? _Innocent_. And you don't want to hear those words said out loud to your dad. He's your _dad_.

Simon won't stop, though. He turns to you again, and it's like he can see inside your head. "Whenever you hurt someone," he says, "You see his face, don't you?" And you're back outside the Dog, and _Maybe you are just like your dad_, and you're taking the power back but the blood on your fist is Steven's.

Your dad is angry, you can hear it seething beneath the calm as he argues back at Simon. He'd never do such a thing as he's suggesting, he says: "Why are you saying these things? What are you talking about?"

He's lying. You know the truth, don't you? You remember the truth, and you remember what's at stake.

"You know what he's talking about, Dad. The things you did... the things you did to me."

"Tell him. Tell him what happened." Simon is the doctor you wanted to ask you, _What really happened, Brendan?_ only your nana was there with you and you were ashamed; he's the teacher you hoped would ask you, _Is everything alright at home? _only you didn't get asked things like that because you were a bad kid. "You've been waiting your whole life to tell him," Simon says.

You look at him for encouragement, and he nods at you; he moves away a little and you look up at him once more as he stands back and looks down at you and your dad, and it's time. You let the memories come, and they crowd in on you, the same pattern time after time, the clock ticking down, waiting for his steps on the stairs, praying to God that they wouldn't stop at your door this time. The key turning to lock him in with you. Your fingers prised off the covers as you tried to keep them on you. _Be a good boy for your daddy. _His breath on your neck. The smell of cigarettes on his hand. The outside world through the gap in the curtains; the longing to get out, escape, go overseas, but knowing you couldn't because you had to stay to protect your baby sister.

You find the words for some of the memories, and you're crying as you speak them, and at the end you ask, "Do you remember that, Dad? I do."

Simon comes to you, crouches down and cuts your bonds, then he says, "Maybe this'll loosen his tongue," and he drops a length of metal pipe onto the floor in front of you.

You pick it up and get to your feet, and stand over your dad. "Brendan, son," he says.

Your words are flowing now that you've started, along with the memories. He used to say it was your little secret, that no one could know, and you want to know from him what you wanted to know then: why you? What had you done that was so wrong that it made him do what he did to you? You remember how you abandoned your own kids because when you looked at them, when you bathed them or put them to bed, all you could think was, how does a father look at his child and see someone who deserves to be violated? So you ran, and you lost the thing you loved most in the world, because of Seamus. And now here you are, about to lose the thing you love most in the world all over again – that's if you haven't lost him already – because of Seamus.

"We are in this situation because of you," you tell him, and your voice is rising to a scream. "So why, I am begging you, tell me, why me?"

"Okay. Okay, son." His tone becomes intimate. "These things he's making you say, I swear on your mother's soul... they never happened."

This is your nightmare. You almost crumble, but then anger overtakes you and you raise the weapon to strike him.

His scream stops you, and the man you're looking down at – your father – seems suddenly pathetic.

He says he's sorry. You can barely believe that he's saying this, after all these years – that he's admitting that it happened. He says he never meant to hurt you. He says he didn't know how to stop. You're shaken, bewildered. You've hurt someone you didn't mean to hurt. You've not known how to stop. Are you the same as him?

"Did you hate me?" you ask.

"No. I loved you, more than the world. I'd pray not to give in, but then the night would come. If you're looking for answers, I haven't got any. All I know is, I'm going to Hell. But nothing of what happened is your fault."

You feel light headed, disorientated. You've heard a confession, and you don't know where you go from here.

Clarity – or a version of it – comes when Walker speaks.

"Go on. Forgive him. Lend this day a certain tragic poignancy." He's satisfied, mocking, and you're reminded that this is a game to him. You've been so caught up in it that you've played into his hands, done exactly what he wanted, let him toy with you, and for what? You've got to get a grip and remember what you're playing for.

"And then what?" you ask him.

"Then, I want you to make him pay."

You look at Seamus. He is at your mercy. He can't escape you, restrained as he is. He looks small, down there on the floor. He didn't hesitate when the power was his, so what's stopping you, now that it's yours?

"He's my dad."

Walker is rattled. What, did he think you were that sort of killer, the sort that likes the odds nicely stacked in your favour? He tells you, urgently, his control ebbing, that in this final round it's your decision who dies: your father, or Cheryl and Steven. He raises his gun at you, and now the ultimatum is, you kill Seamus or Walker shoots you and then, he says, Cheryl and Steven won't have it nearly so quick.

Your dad tells you to do it. He wants you to do what you have to do to save Cheryl: he would die to save someone he loves. Is he the same as you?

You think of your sister and Steven, and you've got to do it, and you're going to. You're going to but you can't. He's confessed his sins against you. He's willing to lay down his life for his daughter. _All his transgressions that he hath committed, they shall not be mentioned unto him: in his righteousness that he hath done he shall live. _

You scream at him, "I can't."

"Yes you can." Your dad's voice is laced with contempt.

"I can't, I can't."

"Now stop your snivelling. I'm your father, and I want you to look after Cheryl." He's shouting at you. "Now do it. Just do it."

You're not being told what to do any more. You lift the metal pole, and you hurl it at Walker. He dodges it, and it clatters against the kitchen wall behind him. You lunge at him, try to get the gun from him but he fights back. There's a struggle, and he's behind you with his arm around your throat, and he's still got the gun but you hit behind you with your elbow and your fist, and the impact is enough to weaken him for a moment, and you take your chance and wrestle the gun from his hand. It skids on the floor as it lands. He tightens his grip round your neck.

Either of you could win now.

"Where are they?" you ask him.

He doesn't tell you. He says he's got what he came for, and then he lets go his hold of you and pushes you so you crash to the floor. You land on the gun but by the time you've picked it up and rolled over to point it at him, he's vanished out of the back of the house.

You scramble to your feet and look for him, but he really has gone.

"God's sake, Brendan, untie me."

You get a knife from the kitchen drawer and cut the ties from Seamus's wrists.

"You okay, Dad?"

"He'll have gone to hurt Cheryl. I'll call the police."

"They're already here." You can hear sirens outside. "They must have found them, Steven and Chez. They must be okay."

The police will be up here any moment.

You catch sight of Walker's gun, and on an impulse, you slide it under the sofa, and then you return to your dad. He's standing up now, and you touch his shoulder, a gesture that says, _Are you okay?_And he returns your touch and smiles at you, and your skin doesn't crawl, and you have never touched each other like that before.

Your heart stops when the front door opens, and starts again when Cheryl and Steven run in.

Cheryl throws herself into your arms.

"I thought I'd lost you," you say, and you hope Steven knows that you're talking to him.

"Me too," Cheryl says.

As you're holding her, you look over her shoulder at him. He looks exhausted, wiped out with shock and tears and whatever Walker put him through.

You let go of your sister so she can go to her dad, and then you remember that Walker is still out there and you head past Steven towards the door.

"He's with the police," Steven tells you, and you stop in your tracks and turn to face him, and he asks you, "You okay?"

"I been worse." It doesn't matter how you are, anyhow. There's only one thing that matters. "Steven, I'm sorry, I should never have laid a hand on you."

"I'm sorry that I doubted you," he says, but he doesn't have to apologise to you, not ever. All you want is to hold him, to feel that he's really here, and you move towards him but he shrinks from you, and he tells you, "It doesn't excuse what you did to me though."

He's made of china, this boy standing in front of you. He's rigid, unyielding, and you can see why: he's that, or he's shattered.

"I promise you," you tell him, "One day, if you'll let me, I'll give you a reason to – "

And then he's in your arms, clinging on to you as if you're the only solid thing on this earth, and he says,"I thought I was gonna die."

"It's okay. It's okay." It's not okay. Everything he's gone through, he's gone through because of you. But you tell him, "It's okay, I got you now," and you hug him tight so the broken pieces of him stay together.

He's cold, freezing cold; you can feel him shivering.

"Is he okay?" Cheryl comes to you.

"What happened, Chez? Where'd Walker take you?"

"He locked us in a van, a freezer van. Sounds stupid, but it... there was no air, and we couldn't get out, Bren, and it was so cold, Ste passed out in there."

"Jesus. We better get you to a doctor, Steven, okay?" You don't want to let go of him, but he extricates himself.

"No. I'm okay."

"Are you sure, Steven, cos if – "

There's a knock on the door, making all of you jump.

It's the police. They tell you that Walker is safely in custody, and then they set about taking your accounts of what happened tonight

They barely speak to Cheryl and Steven once they know they weren't in the house when Walker was. They take statements from your dad and you, though; you manage to listen to what Seamus is telling them, and he is light on the details – he says nothing about the conversation Walker made him have with you, naturally, and he knows fuck all about Walker's motives anyhow. He tells them there was a gun, but he says everything happened so quickly in the end that he doesn't know what happened to it. You wonder if he's genuinely confused, or if he saw you stashing it and is covering for you.

When it's your turn, you say you thought Walker took it with him when he ran; one of the officers says he didn't have it on him when he was searched, so they are going to examine the surrounding area in daylight as he must have thrown it somewhere when he left the house.

Chester's finest.

:::::::

It's after two in the morning by the time the police have gone.

Steven stands up.

"I better get going," he says.

"No you won't," Cheryl tells him. "You'll stay here tonight, both of yous. The bed's still made up in your old room, Bren."

You catch a look of alarm flicker across Steven's face, and you say, "You take my room, Steven. I'll take the couch, okay?"

Cheryl realises her mistake: maybe with everything that's happened since, she'd forgotten what you did to Steven a few hours ago, and that the last thing he'd want to do would be to share a bed with you.

"There's the spare room upstairs," she says. "Ste can sleep there."

Seamus is taking this in. You guess he'd assumed that Steven's battered face was down to Walker, but by now he must be working out that there's something wrong between the two of you.

He pours himself another whiskey – he's had a few by now – and says, "I'll be going up myself now."

"Me too," Cheryl says. She kisses Steven then you.

Your dad clasps your shoulder and says, "Night, son," then looks at Steven and nods.

You're left alone with Steven.

Maybe it's the alcohol still messing with your thoughts, or maybe it's the exhaustion making you imagine things, but you've got an overwhelming sense that you don't want Steven to spend the night – or what's left of it – in a bedroom one door along from your dad's. You're being paranoid. If there's one good thing that's come out of this god forsaken night, it's that you've finally made Seamus face what he's done, and he's sorry. And yet you can't ignore this feeling.

"Steven. Take my room, please."

"I'm not sleeping with you."

"I know. Look, Steven, it's... I know it's my fault, what happened tonight. Everything. Walker wouldn't have gone after you if I didn't... if I hadn't sold to his brother, and – "

"Walker's got no excuse for what he done."

"No."

"Anyway I'm not bothered about Walker. He's gone now, and what he was gonna do to me, it wouldn't hurt as much as – "

"Steven, I'm sorry."

"... It wouldn't hurt as much as this." He touches the wound your fist made on his cheekbone. "D'you know why?"

"No."

"Because I love you, Brendan, that's why. I love you."

Your heart is in your mouth: you never thought you would hear him say those words again.

"Steven." You move towards him, but he stops you with a shake of his head.

"I can't," he says. "I can't just..."

"Okay."

He stands and looks at you for a moment, then he goes towards the stairs, but stops on the bottom step.

"You didn't say it back," he says.

"Would you believe me if I did?"

There's a pause that seems to go on for ever, and then he says, "Yes."

You want to tell him how much you love him, but he looks so fragile standing there that you think the weight of your feelings – of your need for him – might crush him. So you just say to him, "I love you."

He smiles at you, and your heart hurts.

"Night, Brendan." He starts climbing the stairs.

What if you never get the chance to tell him? What if the moment is never right? You have to tell him now.

"Steven, I..."

"What?"

You lose your nerve; but then you tell him anyway.

"Mo ghrá thú, Stiofán. Tá níos mó grá agam... Tá níos mó grá agam duitse ná do mo chuid páistí. Tá tú níos tábhachtai dom ná mo shaol féin. B'fhearr liom bás a fháil ná bheith gan tusa."

He frowns at you. "What's that mean?"

"It means... It means, I love you, Steven. Very much."

"That's a lot of words for that, innit?" He hesitates, then turns again and goes on up the stairs.

"Yeah. It's a lot of words for that."

:::::::

You're dog tired but you lie in bed wide awake; you're listening for every sound in the sleeping house.

You sit up when you hear a bedroom door open and close upstairs. You can't tell which room it is, and you hold your breath trying to hear where the footsteps go. The next sound is of the stairs creaking. Maybe someone is coming down for a glass of water, that's the obvious thing, but you fix your eyes on your bedroom door.

There's no more sound, and after a few minutes you open your door quietly and go to see if anyone is there.

There's someone on one of the sofas, lying on it. It's Steven, and he's asleep, you can tell from his breathing, it's slow and shallow like it always is when he's just drifted off. He has half heartedly tried to cover himself with one of the throws but it's already slipped off so you pick it up and tuck it around him. You wonder why he's come downstairs to sleep on a couch instead of staying in a comfortable bed upstairs. The only reason you can think of – and it's stupid, you're kidding yourself – is that he wanted to be nearer to you.

You go back to your bedroom. You leave the door open so that you'll hear if anyone disturbs Steven, or if he has a nightmare, or if he needs you. Then you get back into bed, and at last you sleep.


	20. Chapter 20

You wake with a jolt, and for a moment you think something must have woken you; but the room is dark and silent, and you realise it was only your unquiet mind that ended your sleep.

You're in a strange bed. It's your own, or was – it's the one you slept in when you lived here at Cheryl's – but it's strange to you now, and you sit up. You peer at your watch, and it tells you that you've been asleep for less than two hours, but you doubt if you'll manage to drift off again. There's too much in your head, too much that's happened in the past twenty-four hours, and you're not sure you know where you go from here. This time yesterday you were in bed with Steven, and the day ahead held the ordeal of your court appearance. The hearing seems long ago and feels trivial now, and yet its ramifications were anything but trivial, and your stomach churns when you remember what you did to Steven.

When you get out of bed your head swims, and you stand still until it settles. You're hung over, and there's a tender bump on the back of your head where Simon Walker knocked you out last night. Your body is sore from your tussle with him, and you guess he must have dragged you into position to tie you up when you were unconscious, because your arms ache. Your knuckles feel tight: you stretch out your fingers then clench them, and wince at the dull pain, and do the same again to feel the pain again.

You walk out into the front room.

Steven is fast asleep on the sofa; you stand still again and listen to his breathing. His mouth is open, and his long, deep breaths make a sound in his throat that, if things were different – if you hadn't driven him away from you – you would tease him about in the morning. _You were snoring_, you would tell him, and it would be a lie because you're the one that snores according to him, and what he's doing is nothing like it, but it would be worth the lie to see him pout at you when he denied it. He'd say, _Why didn't you wake me up then, if I was snoring?_

It's easy to quieten his breathing. You just have to lift his heavy head and tilt it gently forward so his mouth closes. But you don't do that now, because he isn't yours to handle any more.

This house is cold in the early hours of the morning, and you're just in your boxers. You pull the throw off the back of the other sofa, and you lie down and pull it over you, and prop your head on the arm rest so you can see him just across from you, and you'll know he's okay.

It's after six when the first light starts to filter through the window. You haven't had any more sleep, and Steven hasn't moved except once, when his eyes opened wide and he seemed to look straight at you for a second, but you don't think he was really awake at all.

You need the bathroom, so you leave him and go quietly up the stairs.

The shower feels good, and it warms you.

When you unlock the door and step out of the bathroom, your dad is there in the hallway, shutting the door of the spare bedroom. You're startled, but he smiles.

"Didn't know if it was you in the shower, or Steven," he says, and you feel the skin on the back of your neck tighten. "You two made up, have you?"

He must have gleaned that there's a problem between Steven and you, but you don't know if Cheryl has told him anything, so you're non-committal: "How d'you mean?"

"He didn't sleep up here in the spare room after all. So I'm guessing he was with you, son. That's all." Again he smiles.

"I'd better go and..." you say, because you're standing there with just a towel around you. You head for the stairs.

"Yes," your dad says, "Or you'll catch your death."

You think he's watching you go. You _feel_ he is, and you fight the urge to run, and you shouldn't still be feeling that way because in the course of Walker's twisted little game last night you made a breakthrough, didn't you? You need to salvage a fresh start with Seamus from what you and he were made to say to each other; things can't be the same, now that he has acknowledged what he did to you.

He doesn't come downstairs. You hear him go back into his room.

Yesterday's clothes are unwearable. Your suit is like a rag and your shirt stinks of sweat. There are still some clothes here that you haven't got around to picking up and taking to the flat though, so you're able to get dressed in something clean. Then you return to the front room, and eventually there are sounds from upstairs of your dad and your sister moving about. Steven will wake soon, but at the moment he's peaceful. You perch on the coffee table and you pick up his phone from where it's lying beside him on the couch, and you wake it up because you want to know if his wallpaper is the same as it was. It is: it's a picture of Leah and Lucas and you. Probably it doesn't mean anything, and there's been too much going on for him to get around to changing it, but still... still it gives you some kind of hope.

You open the front doors wide to let some air in, and you walk outside and look down over the village. It's raining again.

Steven appears beside you. He taps you on your side to tell you he's there, and you look at him. He doesn't say anything, but after a moment he looks at you, and there's something in his eyes, however bruised they are, that says that the ties that bind you two together have not yet been cut. He doesn't look happy about that – how could he be? – but maybe he's too tired to fight it. Maybe you both are.

He goes back inside, and you follow him after a moment, and he heads for the kitchen hunting for breakfast. Your dad has come downstairs, and he says to you that it's hard to believe that last night really happened at all.

"Oh well," he says, "Today's a new day isn't it?"

"Yeah. Yeah it is, Dad."

Cheryl comes down too, kisses him then goes to chat with Steven. You exchange another glance with your dad, and you think – you _think_ – that for him too, there's a willingness that things between you should change.

There's a knock on the door almost as soon as you've closed it. You open up, and it's Milner, the DI from last night. He asks himself in, and he says he's glad you're all here because he's got some unfortunate news to deliver.

Your sister asks what the news is, but you know it, and it's so inevitable that it's as if you've always known it.

"The dog's slipped his leash again," you say to Milner, "Hasn't he."

It's not a question but a statement, and Milner looks ashamed. It's the least he can do.

He won't go into details, only says that the car taking Walker back to the police station last night went off the radar, and when it was found it was a write-off and the prisoner was nowhere to be seen. Milner doesn't say as much, but you get the impression his officers were casualties. What he does say is, he's got people stationed in the village, and you're all advised to keep your eyes open and to stay close by until Walker is apprehended.

"Good luck with that," you say.

He takes your sarcasm on the chin, and he says to you, "I do have some better news for you, Mr Brady. We won't be proceeding with the two charges of assault which we brought against you."

"Kevin's talked, has he?"

"I'm afraid Kevin Foster isn't well enough to be interviewed yet – "

"I'll bring him some grapes."

"... But we have Maxine Minniver's statement, and we have no reason to doubt the information she supplied. We'll apply to the CPS immediately to get the charges struck off, but that's just a formality." Milner is squirming: you reckon his predecessor, Walker's old boss Shawnee, has lost her job and this guy is wondering if he is heading the same way. "I will do everything I can to expedite the process, you have my word on that."

"So that's it, is it?" you ask. "It's just dropped, and everybody's gonna forget about it, are they, what I got accused of?"

Seamus changes the subject, starts giving Milner a hard time, asks him which he's more proud of, the fact that Walker is a copper – "Was", the DI corrects him – or that they're incapable of stopping him.

As Milner leaves, you say to him, "He'll never stop. You know that, don't you? Not until he gets what he wants." Not unless he gets what he wants, or somebody stops him.

Steven stands up and says he's not hanging around here, he's got a business to run. You're going to argue but he looks straight at you and tells you he's sick of it. Maybe he sees the fear in you before you hide it, because then he reassures you, says there are police all around anyhow. He's right. You don't like it, but you can't stop him, and he pushes past you and goes out just as Nate arrives bearing flowers for Cheryl.

Flowers never worked on Eileen, but you hope to god Nate has better luck.

While Cheryl is distracted you slip out of the house. Steven is talking to an officer at the bottom of the steps and you run down to see what it's about.

"Will you tell him, Brendan? He doesn't want me going home on my own, right, but I've got to get changed for work, in't I."

"I'll come with you."

Steven just looks at you.

The copper then says they'll take him home, and that way they'll get to check that Walker hasn't shown up there. Steven accepts that, and you're relieved, but you know that it's only a matter of time before that man tries again to take what you love from you.

You go over to the club with a police escort, and they search it briefly but there's no sign that anyone has been in there. Your coat is in the office so you bring that with you, lock up, and when you get back to Cheryl's no one has even noticed you were gone.

:::::::

You can't sit around any more waiting for Walker to make a move. You've got to do something.

Cheryl is starting to ask questions about what happened here last night. You brush her off with a joke, and you know for sure that Seamus won't be any more forthcoming to her than you are.

She's noticed that you and your dad are getting along better though, and you say to her, "Yeah well, staring the Devil straight in the face will do that to you." You let her assume that by the Devil, you mean Walker.

You lie to her that you're just going over to the club because you forgot to lock it up, and you tell her you'll be right back. You tell her that you love her, and she says she loves you too. Lastly you tell her to go easy on Nate. If _I'll be right back_ was another lie – and there's every chance that it was – you need to know that someone will be there to keep your sister safe.

Your car is outside the gym where Cheryl left it last night. You get in and drive to the nearest petrol station, fill it up and fill up a petrol can too. You look again at the message that Walker sent from your phone to Steven last night directing them to his trap, and that's where you head.

You've left Walker's gun back where you hid it under the couch at Cheryl's, because you're half expecting to find the place cordoned off and police examining the scene, but the other half of you – the half that's aware of the level of competence of the local force – is right, and the place is deserted.

There's no sign of the ice truck that Cheryl and Steven were locked inside of, which means either the police have moved it or Walker came back here after he escaped. There's a cabin though, like Cheryl said there was, and as you open the door you wonder what you'll do if he's in there. A fight, you suppose, and this time you'd have surprise on your side and a petrol can in your hand to knock him out with, and then you would burn him. There's no one here, though. You look around: there's a mattress on the floor, a dodgy-looking cooker, water bottles, food wrappers, the detritus of a fugitive's life. The air smells rancid.

At the end of the hut there's a blanket covering something hung on the wall. You rip it off, and underneath, stuck to the wall are pictures, cuttings, a map. Cheryl's there. Seamus. Your nana. Steven. You. A photograph of a young lad you don't recognise, but his picture is on a newspaper cutting too, and it's Cameron Walker. Other cuttings are about Anne, about Warren Fox's arrest, about Danny fucking Houston being fished out of the water. There are pins in the map, marking Cheryl's place, yours; there's one marking a place in a cemetery. You try and work out if there are any clues it can give you as to where Walker might have gone to, but you can't make sense of it.

You need to get out of here. You pour the petrol from the can all around. Maybe the police would be able to deduce something from the map to help them find Walker, but you can't take the chance of them seeing all those cuttings and asking you some awkward questions about Cameron or even Houston, and even now you can hear police sirens coming from a few streets away.

Your phone rings, and it's Steven. You answer, tell him now is not a good time, but what he tells you makes your heart stop.

"It's Walker, he said he's gonna hurt the kids." He sounds distraught, and he's gabbling, but somehow he's had a message via that girl Texas, that Walker wants you to meet him on your own at the place where his brother is buried. "He's not gonna stop coming after us, is he?"

"I don't think he is." There's no point pretending otherwise: Steven isn't stupid.

"Whatever you've got to do to stop him," he says, "Just do it, please. And be careful... I love you."

"I love you too."

You start the fire, and run back to your car.

It's got to be the cemetery that was marked on the map. It's not far away, and when you get there you slow down and drive through it, but you don't see anyone so you stop and get out of the car, and start walking among the graves, waiting for Walker to show himself. He could be anywhere, and maybe you're about to get a bullet in your head, but you doubt it: you know by now, a quick kill is not his style.

It's freezing here. It's as if this place has its own climate, stuck in the winter with snow on the ground and no hope of spring returning to bring life back to it.

There's a sound of life though. You hear it, a motorbike getting nearer to you, and you turn around to see it slowly driving past your car and coming to a halt. It's him, isn't it? It has to be him. The rider raises his visor and looks at you, and there's no mistaking him. You take a step or two towards him but he takes off, so you run to your car, reverse after him and as soon as there's space you spin the steering wheel and the tyres skid on the frozen tarmac as you do a one-eighty degree turn and put your foot down.

When you leave the cemetery you can't see which way he's gone, but then he's there in the distance as he doubles back on himself to let you see him, and you hit the gas and pursue him.

The route he's taking is crazy. He must be leading you somewhere, but he's taking you down side roads and turning after turning, and you've lost any sense of where you are. You think it's another one of his games, to mess with your head and disorientate you, but then something occurs to you, and from then on you check to see if you're right, and you are: none of the roads and tracks Walker is taking have cameras on them. Clever fucking bastard. He thinks he's the one that's going to end this day alive, and so he's making sure he stays invisible. Fuck him. If there's no footage of him on his bike, there'll be none of your car either, so he's doing you a favour, and you're going to win this. He's got nothing to live for, but you have. You get your phone out of your pocket as you pick up speed, and you switch it off so there'll be no trace to place you at the scene – wherever the scene is.

Your heart is pumping. You've caught up with him on a single track road and you're trying to run him off it, swerving and chasing as he banks and almost ditches, but he gets away from you again, goes off road and takes a corner, and you have to brake fiercely so by the time you follow him around it he's gone.

And then you see his motorbike, abandoned in the middle of the road ahead of you. You pull up, then drive on slowly and stop again a few feet from it. You get out of your car and walk towards the bike, and then you turn around and look up at the viaduct that you've just driven under. There's a kind of dark Victorian grandeur to it, and you know – you just _know_ – that this where he has chosen to stage this showdown.

You stare up at the massive structure, and it's not until he moves that you see him, standing on the skyline looking down at you.

This is it, then.

It takes you a while to find your way up there, and you're already breathing hard when you make it to the top. He sees you as you start walking towards him alongside the railway lines.

"Welcome to the day of your reckoning," he says as you get within shouting distance.

In his mind, this is obviously some kind of epic drama, and he thinks he knows how it ends. This is not going to be a slugging match, mano a mano like you and Foxy used to play it – or at least, it's not going to be just that. In Walker's script this is something greater, something that will give meaning to his life and to his brother's miserable death, and you find yourself playing the part that he's cast you in. If Simon Walker is the avenging angel, you are from Hell.

You're here for a fight to the death – you both know that – but first, you give him a speech. You tell him that for months now, there have been voices in your head telling you to atone for your sins; and what you're saying is the truth in a way, because you have tried and tried to be a better man.

"But you," you say to Walker, "You just kept coming, didn't you?" You have flattered him into listening, and all the while you've moved closer and closer to him; you've taken off your coat, and so has he. "Which begs the question, what does this world want me to be? A god-fearing man... or a man who knows who he really is?"

"And what's your answer?"

"That I miss the old me."

Walker laughs. He thinks he's got what he wanted, he thinks that his efforts to destroy the life you've tried to make have succeeded, and that you have reverted to the monster that he needs you to be, in this narrative of his in which his task is to rid the earth of your evil. But he is missing what's really happening here: you miss the old you, the one that had nothing to lose, but that old you wouldn't have come here today. What Walker is missing is that you have come here because of the man you have become. You have come here because you love.

He's still laughing when you run at him. You barrel into him and send him crashing onto his back on the stones by the side of the track, and you land on top of him, punching him, once, twice. He twists his body and kicks you off him, and as you scramble to your feet he does too. You trade blows, dodging, blocking, then you get the advantage and you back him against the wall, hold him by the throat and land a punch on his face. He recovers faster than you expect, and as you take another swing at him he gets hold of your arm, yanks it behind your back as he gets behind you, and shoves your head and shoulders through the railings on top of the wall. Far beneath you, you see the river flowing under the viaduct, and you think that's where you're going to end up.

You grip the railing and lever yourself back and away from the edge. Walker gets his arm around your throat, and punches you in the back. You crash forward and land heavily on the ground.

"This is for Cam," he says, and kicks you while you're down. You're disabled, and all you can do is crawl and scramble away from him, across the railway tracks, but he follows you and as you reach the wall on the other side and start to get up, he says, "This is for everyone that you've hurt," and his fist jabs into your face, sending you reeling. He hauls you up and pushes you against the railings. "And this is for me," he tells you, and you double over as he punches you in the stomach.

Your head is spinning. Walker has got you pinned against the wall, his weight leaning on your chest, his hand pressing your face against the railing. Every breath you take is agony. He's started to talk again and you struggle to concentrate on what he's saying.

"I've left a little present for your family, a last minute parting gift that is gonna tear their lives apart." You're hearing him but you're hearing something else as well. Can't he hear it? The railway line is starting to hum, you can feels its vibration and you can see it too, a train down the track that is coming this way. You muster whatever strength you've got left, and you listen to Walker's last words, "I am finally gonna kill the name _Brendan Brady._" And then you punch him and twist out of his grip. He tries to get his balance.

_Whatever you've got to do to stop him, just do it._

You pause for a fraction of a second, and then you kick him into the path of the engine.

The train screams past you, deafening you. When it's gone there's someone shouting, sounds of pain and shock, but it's not Walker – Walker is nowhere. It's your own voice, and you stagger over the tracks, and you're shaking, and as your shouts die away all that's left in between your gasping breaths is the metallic singing of the rails, until that too dies off.

You lean over the wall and vomit. There's blood when you wipe the back of your hand across your mouth. You shut your eyes and hold on, and you try and get control of yourself.

You straighten up and look around you. Walker's jacket is lying bundled by the wall; you check the pockets, but there's nothing in there that could incriminate you, so you leave it there. You go and pick your own coat up, and then make your way back down to the road below, and get in the car. The motorbike is still there ahead of you, and that's where you'll leave it. Will it look like suicide? You think it might, as long as the driver of the train wasn't looking where he was going when you kicked Walker onto the track.

As you try and get the key into the ignition your hand shakes and you drop it; you lean down to find it in the footwell and the movement makes you retch again. You close your eyes and you see Walker's face as he realised what was happening to him.

Breathe.

You start the car and reverse slowly along the road and around the corner, then you concentrate on retracing the route you took on the way to this place, until you begin to recognise your location, and then you pull in to a side road and park. You angle the rear view mirror so you can see your face. Jesus. You look like a ghost, if ghosts could bleed.

You feel in the glove compartment. There's a packet of wipes in there – you bought them for the next time you take Steven for a ride – and you rip it open and clean yourself up as best you can. Then you take the road to Liverpool, and make for a busy, anonymous service station you know on the outskirts, and you ask for your car to be cleaned.

You sit with a cup of coffee while you wait, and you turn your phone back on. You've got two voicemails. One is from Jim McGinn, saying he's heard from the police that they're setting things in motion to dismiss the case against you: "So," he says, "All's well that ends well." The other is from Cheryl, asking you where you've got to. "Ste said you're off on business, but I know that boy, and I know when he's not telling me the truth."

Steven is a good lad; he knows when things are on a need-to-know.

There are two texts, and they're both from him. The first one says, _Woried about u. Phone me_ _pls soon as poss x_. The second one says, _Love u x_.

You almost don't reply. You can't process what has happened for yourself, let alone explain it to someone else. But you can't leave him wondering, so you send him a message: _Kids are safe now_.

He calls you straight back, and you press reject and turn off your phone again.

:::::::

You pull up outside the flats.

All day and into the night you've been driving around; parking up and trying and failing to sleep; driving again. If you'd had your passport with you, you might have got on a plane somewhere, but there's nowhere to run when it's yourself you're running from; so in the end you have come home, even though the man you've come home to is better off without you.

It's almost one o'clock when you let yourself into the flat. There's a light on in the hallway but the rest of the place is in darkness, and you wonder if Steven is here or whether he's stayed a second night at Cheryl's. You try not to make any noise anyhow, in case he is in the bedroom.

You go into the kitchen, and you don't switch the light on. You strip everything off except your boxers, put your shoes in the sink and your clothes in the washing machine. You figure out where the detergent goes, but the controls make no sense to you and you kneel in front of it and start pressing buttons at random and waiting for something to happen. Fuck, you should know this, you should know how to work the fucking washing machine. Why don't you know how the fuck to turn the washing machine on?

And then Steven is there. You stand up, and he presses something and the light on the machine comes on and you hear it start to fill with water.

You go to the sink and you run the tap and start scrubbing the bottoms of your shoes. Steven is standing watching you in silence.

Eventually he says, "I'll run you a bath," and he goes.

He's standing in the doorway when you turn around again. His eyes drop, and he moves aside to let you pass.

You sink into the bath. When you run your wet hands through your hair, dirt sticks to them, and the shampoo floats as a grey scum on the surface of the bath water when you rinse it out. Your body is stiff when you climb out; everything hurts.

You put on the dressing gown that's hanging on the back of the bathroom door.

Steven comes out of the kitchen when he hears you.

"There's a sandwich if you're hungry." He nods towards the front room, and you go in there and sit down. "Kettle's boiled, or there's beer."

His voice is quiet and has an edge to it. You know he is frightened and hurt, and you've hurt him again by going missing all day and half the night.

"Tea's fine," you say. You remember what you did last time you had a drink. "Thank you."

There's a plate on the coffee table, and there are jam sandwiches on it. You have felt too nauseous to eat since this morning, but you're suddenly hungry, and you're half way through the sandwiches by the time Steven puts a mug of tea down in front of you. It's too hot to drink but you drink it anyway.

He leans against the wall and watches you until you've finished.

"So, you gonna tell me what happened?"

You glance up at him, and register for the first time that he's in jeans and a sweater, so he must have stayed up waiting for you to come home.

"Walker won't be coming back," you say.

"Is he dead?" He takes your silence as a yes, and asks, "How?"

"Does it matter?"

"Tell me how."

"He got... he got hit by a vehicle." The less detail Steven knows, the better.

"You ran him over?" He sounds shocked.

"No. It was... He got hit."

"Killed."

"You're not... Leah and Lucas, they're not in danger any more, Steven."

"Don't put it on them. Don't you put it on my kids, Brendan." His anger flames at you.

"I'm not."

"You better not." And then the flame dies utterly and he says, "It was me told you to do it. It was me."

"No." You stand up. "No, it was me, okay? It was me that brought him here, and it was me that had to end it. I had to, Steven. None of this... Nothing of this is down to you."

He looks like he might break, and you want to hold him in your arms but when you take a step towards him, there is a shake of his head that's almost imperceptible, but it's enough to stop you.

"You can have the bed," he says.

You shake your head.

"You take the bed," you tell him. "You slept on a couch last night, so. I'll be okay here."

"You can sleep in Leah's, then."

"Sofa's fine." A grown man has no business being in a child's bed.

"Alright then. Night." He looks back at you as he goes.

You pick up your plate and cup to take them to the kitchen, and as you swallow the last mouthful of tea, it occurs to you that when he made it for you, he put three sugars in.

:::::::

There's little chance of sleep, like last night and the night before. Even if you weren't frightened of your dreams, the sofa is cramped and awkward to lie on and every way you turn you're putting pressure on a bruise or you're twisting your aching back.

You hear Steven go out of the bedroom and into the bathroom. You look at the time on your phone, and it's half past two. A person is more likely to die at half two in the morning than at any other time: you can't remember where you heard that bit of information, but it pops into your head now. Jesus.

You sit up and lean forward, head in hands, trying to ease your back.

The bathroom door opens; you see its light spill dimly from along the hallway before it clicks off, then you listen for the bedroom door to close but it doesn't.

"Can't you sleep?" Steven is in the doorway.

"No. You?"

He doesn't answer, but he takes a step into the room and holds out his hand.

You reach out and take it, and hold it.

He pulls you to your feet, and for a moment you look into his eyes. Then he drops your hand, and you follow him to the bedroom. He gets into bed; you take off your dressing gown and get in too. You lie on your back, stretched out flat. You're not touching him, but you can feel his warmth, and you think you would be happy with this, if this was all there could ever be. It's more than a man like you – a man who has done the things you've done – has a right to expect.

"Did he hurt you?" Steven breaks the silence.

"I'm okay."

"Are you, though?" He turns towards you onto his side and props himself on his elbow.

You dart a look at him.

"I... I saw a man die today. It's not... It's – "

He kisses you. His hand is on your chest and you feel your heart beat against it.

You don't dare touch him.

"Brendan." He kisses you again. "It's okay, Brendan."

When he kisses you again, you hold his head in your hand.

He rolls away onto his back and slithers out of his pyjama bottoms under the cover, and then he crawls across to kneel astride you, and leans down and you hold his head in both hands now as you kiss. His mouth is hot, urgent. His tongue sweeps across your teeth inside your top lip, and then as you open your mouth it slips inside and presses hard against yours. You hear a moan, and you can't tell if it's him or you, but it doesn't matter either way.

He sits up and pulls his vest off over his head, then he starts to fall forward again but he stops and places his hand flat on your ribcage. It's where Walker landed the hardest of his punches, and there must be a bruise there for Steven to have noticed.

"Are your ribs broken?"

"I'll live," you say. You circle his wrist lightly with your hand, and stroke up his arm.

He shakes his head and he rests forward onto you to kiss you again. You run your fingertips up and down his flanks. There's sweat in his pits when your thumbs dip in there. He's grinding now, his balls soft as they rub over your cock. He arches his neck and leans on you, forehead on forehead, and he's panting, his breath coming hot onto your face, into your mouth. Your body is burning for him, every nerve ending crackling with the need for his touch. Your cock is straining up against the weight of him on you, and then he raises himself up on his knees so it's untrapped and it springs up through his legs and slaps onto your stomach. When he kisses you again, you feel his cock alongside yours now, rubbing against it, and you slide your hand between your bellies and wrap it around both his cock and yours, and squeeze them together and palpate them, and his breaths sharpen and become vocal.

You let go when he sits up, and when he reaches over to the bedside and picks up the tube of lube, you say, "Are you sure, Steven?" He looks at you, incredulous at your question, but you touch his face, pressing your thumb firmly enough onto his cut, bruised cheekbone to remind him what you have done to him. "Are you sure?" you ask again, and you see in his eyes the shock of remembering the beating, and you tell him, "I never meant to hurt you, Steven. I just didn't know how to stop."

The voice of your father echoes in your head. Your distress must show in your face because Steven's becomes etched with concern, and he says, "I know. I know you didn't."

"I love you." To your own ears, your _I love you_ sounds like _My life depends on you_.

He doesn't say it back.

He squeezes some lube onto his fingers, and his hand disappears behind his back but only for a second – he must just have stroked it on, and not in. Then he takes hold of your cock, and his lubricated grip makes you shiver. Your erection has softened, but you've leaked pre-cum and he shuffles back a bit and dips his head to lap it away, and you harden again.

He comes back up your body then, and this time when he feels behind him it's to get hold of your cock. He steadies himself with a hand braced in the middle of your chest, and the pressure where you are injured and raw sends a pain searing through you, but you don't cry out because you don't deserve for the hurt to stop.

He's pushing you into him. You feel your tip forcing him open, and you're an inch or two inside, and Steven crouches over you and holds your face in both his hands, and he scatters kisses on your cheeks, your eyelids, your lips. He didn't say it back, but for all his usual chatter, love for him is something that's done more than said. What he is doing is loving you.

The skin of his back is damp under your palms, and soft as velvet. You can feel his ribs when you smooth your hands firmly over them. His spine is a convex curve as he hunches over your body, and his vertebrae feel as if they might pop through his pelt like spines. His shoulder blades are sharp too: you dig your fingers under their points, and you think if you could get a grip on them you could yank them free and they would unfurl into wings. What _is_ he? What kind of creature can make you a killer, yet make you strive to be a better man? You wonder if you knew, when you first got the scent of that scrawny boy and got set on his trail, that he was something infinitely more than he seemed – that he would be the one that saved you. You couldn't have known, not then; only now when you look at him, it seems impossible that you didn't know.

Your thoughts are swimming in your head. You hardly know where you are, only that he is with you, on you, and that you have to grab onto him or you'll drown.

You focus.

In this position, you're only shallowly inside him. You reach down to his arse and feel his rim where it's gripping around the head of your cock, and you manipulate your middle finger in, then stretch him enough to get your index finger inside too. You feel your knuckles rubbing against your cock, and when you curl your fingers his muscles jerk and he tightens. He stops kissing you, and his head bows into the crook of your neck, and you lean your cheek against his hair and listen to him whimpering.

You want to feel him all around you.

You move your hands to his shoulders and push him up, wanting him to sit back hard on you, but he thinks you want him off you and he kneels up and you almost fall out of him. So then you sit up, wincing as your stomach muscles clench, and you put your hands at the backs of his knees and pull his legs forward to unbalance him, and he slides rapidly down your shaft til he's impaled on you, and you're engulfed in him. He cries out with the shock of it, and the pain maybe, and so do you even though you made it happen.

He gets over it. He wraps his arms around your neck and you kiss, and he manoeuvres himself so his legs circle your back now. He takes his pleasure greedily: your knees are bent and he leans his back against your thighs, and you watch him bite his lip as he moves his hips until the pressure of your cock is exactly where he wants it. You couldn't be any deeper inside him, but when he holds his breath and somehow makes his canal contract in waves around you, you feel as if you're being drawn up even further into his body, captive in him.

You pull his mouth to yours with a hand on the back of his neck. You take his cock in your other hand and rub your thumb hard across its tip. He likes that: the harder the better. He opens his mouth to let the sound out and you thrust your tongue in, and you feel his cries hitting the back of your throat as if they're something solid. Your skull is filled with lights, white and blood-red, so blinding that you can almost forget that the darkness is there. You begin to shudder, and his pelvis jerks wildly, and you grab his hair and pull his head back so you can look at him, and as you open your eyes he does too, and he's luminous. Every hair, every pore, every shimmer of sweat is sharply vivid. His face contorts for a second as his cum spurts onto your chest, and you empty yourself into him, and the lights in your head burst and die. You kiss him, and then you look at him again. He is all the light that's left and, by the light in him, you can see his love and you can see his bruises.


	21. Chapter 21

_This is the day of your reckoning... All I know is, I'm going to Hell... I never meant to hurt you, I just didn't know how to stop... Stop... stop your snivelling... Now do it. Just do it... Whatever you've got to do to stop him, just do it, please..._

There's a screeching on the tracks, and you know a train is coming, and the floorboards creak and you know he's coming, and it bears down on you and it blocks out the light and he's in the doorway and he blocks out the light and you know what happens next.

_I've left a little present for your family. A last minute parting gift that is gonna tear their lives apart._

Your eyes open wide, and you're sweating and your heart is racing. You're awake now, and you reach and switch on the bedside lamp, and lie back on the pillow and try to let the nightmare go.

Steven is there beside you. You see him when you turn your head, and now although the nightmare has faded you wonder if you're still asleep, because he wouldn't be here, would he, after what you've done – after what you've done to him. And so you ask yourself, _Am I dreaming_? You're not, though: your body tells you that you're not dreaming, with each ache and pain that asserts itself as you become fully awake, reminding you of the fight to the death that you fought and won. That's not all your body tells you, though. When you rest your hand on your belly you feel cum crusting there where he came on you, and when your hand moves down it finds your pubes flattened with lube; and your cock feels used and used up, and bears traces of him. It was no dream, and you remember all of it, the sex you had tonight and the love you made.

You look at him. He's on his side, facing towards you, his arm outside the cover. You think he'll get cold but you don't want to risk waking him by moving it. His expression is utterly serene.

He's safe now, now that Walker has gone, but he never would have been in danger in the first place if it hadn't been for you, and he wouldn't have lost his kids if it hadn't been for you. Steven knows these things as surely as you do; and yet here he is.

The sound of your phone ringing comes faintly from another room. You don't know who the fuck would call you in the early hours of the morning, and you feel panic rise in you at the thought that it's an emergency – that Walker's words about the parting gift for your family have borne fruit, and he's made something happen to Cheryl or your children. You get out of bed carefully so Steven doesn't wake, pull your dressing gown on again and go out to the front room. The phone has stopped ringing by the time you get to it. You look at the screen. _Missed call_, it says: _Anne._

You call her back.

"Sorry," she says when she answers, "I forgot about the time difference, it must be – "

"No worries. You okay, Anne?"

"Never mind me. What about you, Brendan?"

"What have you heard? Maxine been filling you in?"

"No, not Maxine. She didn't want to worry me, with the baby and everything. It was Nancy that rang me, she thought I ought to know."

"I'm fine."

You give Anne an edited version of Walker's campaign against you, from Kevin's first appearance through to the kidnap of Steven and Cheryl and the confrontation with you and your dad. You find out something, too: you find out that Anne knew before she left that Walker was back, and she left all the details with Maxine to give you because she couldn't find you herself. You ought to be raging when you hear this, but you feel weirdly detached, as if there was such an inevitability about the chain of events that things would have ended up the same anyway. You try to explain this to Anne, because she's distraught about Maxine not giving you her message, but you can barely even explain it to yourself. So you change the subject, ask her about life in California; and it sounds as if she's happy over there.

"You'll have to visit, Brendan. You and Ste, you'd love it." When she doesn't get an answer, she asks, "You are okay, aren't you? Ste's okay? Nancy said he got beaten up, when Walker – "

"It wasn't Walker that beat him up."

You wait while she works out what you're saying. You hear her swallow.

"What happened, Brendan?"

"I... I lost it. He said I was just like my dad, and I just... I got no excuse, I'm... I thought I'd lost him, Anne. I didn't think he'd want to know me any more, but he's..."

"He took you back?"

"Yeah."

"He loves you. But, Brendan, that's got to be the last time." She pauses. "I'm guessing you still haven't told him about your dad, or he never would've said that about you. You haven't, have you?"

"No. I tried to, but..."

"You've got to."

You know she's right. You feel fraudulent, letting Steven be with you when he doesn't know the half of what made you, and now that your dad has said sorry, you think maybe you can find the courage that you lacked before. You need to tell him so that he can decide for himself if you're worth throwing his life away on.

"I will."

"And then... once the police have got Walker again, you'll have a fresh start, nothing nasty left in the closet. So to speak."

"Walker's dealt with," you say. Anne deserves to know, because of Riley. "I dealt with him."

"God."

"You okay?"

"Yes." She draws a breath, and you hear the tremble in it, and when she speaks again her voice is a whisper. "Thank you, Brendan."

"I better go, Anne, it's – "

"Yes, course." She's switched Mitzeee on, bright and protected. "What's the time there?"

You glance at your phone.

"Four, almost."

"You get back to bed, and give your Ste a big sloppy kiss from me, okay?"

"He'll love that."

"Reckon I could turn him? He's quite cute in a certain light."

"Over my dead body."

"You're alright, he's not my type. You, on the other hand..."

You smile.

"Goodnight, Anne."

"Night night." Her voice is warm. "I love you, Brendan Brady – and I don't say that to just anyone, so think yourself lucky."

"Love you too."

You sit for a minute after you hang up, and then you go to the bathroom and wash yourself, and then you go quietly back to the bedroom.

Steven is awake. He's sitting on the edge of the bed, his eyes wide and startled as if he too has just woken from a nightmare. In the shadows cast by the bedside lamp he looks bony and fragile, and his nakedness is shocking.

He looks up at you.

"I thought you wasn't coming back," he says.

"I only went to the toilet."

"No. I mean, before, when... when you... Walker..."

He starts to cry, and you go to him, sit down on the bed beside him, reach for the cover and pull it up around his shoulders; wrap your arms around him.

"Course I came back, I always do, don't I?" You tighten your hold on him as he sobs against your chest. "Hey, it's okay, shh. I'm here, baby. I'm here now."

It's a few minutes before you feel his body become calm. Still you hold him, and you breathe him in. He smells of sex, but underneath that there's the faint vanilla of the soap he's been using, and underneath that there's the scent that you knew was there when you first met him, even though it took a while before you could get him to stop spraying on the Lynx. It's the scent of _him_, and it's something masculine and pure, and its effect on you used to scare you half to death, because that was before he changed everything for you.

"Did you just sniff me?" He looks up at you, his face blotchy and red-eyed, and he wipes his nose with his wrist and does his best to smile.

"Don't be soft." You stand up and pick him up in your arms, and lie him in the middle of the bed, because that's where he likes to sleep given half the chance. You take off your dressing gown and get under the cover with him, and you lie face to face. "You okay now, yeah?"

He nods. You watch his face, and you can tell that he's turning something over in his mind.

"Are you going to tell the police about Walker?" he asks eventually.

"What?"

"If you tell them it was self defence they'll believe you, cos they know he was out to get you."

You're shocked at the suggestion. He's not thinking it through: Walker wasn't the only police officer who's looked for a reason to put you away over the years.

"I don't think I can, Steven."

"But they'll still be looking for him, won't they, so they'll – "

"They didn't look too hard last time," you snap at him, and then you say more gently, "Look, they're gonna find him anyways... His body, they'll find it."

He seems to accept that, and he's silent for a while before he speaks again.

"What do you think he was gonna do? If Doug and Nate hadn't of found us, do you think... d'you think he would've come back and – "

"No. I would've stopped him, Steven, okay? I would've found you." You heard what he and Cheryl told the police about being trapped in that place, and you remember what Walker told you about it. _Cold. Dark. Running out of air_. You'd have got them out of there, or died trying.

"That's what I said to Cheryl," he says. "I was scared though. I just kept thinking about my kids, and... and I kept thinking about you."

"And I kept thinking about you."

"Cheryl was dead brave. Braver than me – I passed out, didn't I."

"That's because there's nothing of you, you got no flesh to stop you from freezing to death. Not because you weren't brave."

"I weren't, though. I gave up."

Is that really what this boy thinks of himself? This boy who has offered his sweet heart, bruised and undefended, time after time to you, knowing you might make it bleed again but running the risk anyhow.

"Steven, you're the bravest man I know."

"It's all gonna be alright now, anyway," he says, "Now that Walker's gone. And everyone's gonna know Kevin lied to the police. And you're even, like, talking to your dad now, so – "

"Steven," you say, and you wish he was right, but that parting gift comes into your head again, and it's all tied up somehow with what Walker made you talk about with your dad, but you don't know how. All you know is, you've got to tell Steven about Seamus.

"I can't wait to see everyone's faces when they find out you're not guilty," he says.

"I'm guilty of a lot of things, Steven."

"Not that, though. And all them people that thought you sexually assaulted him, right, they're gonna be – "

"You did, though."

"What?"

"You thought I sexually assaulted him."

"No I never." He looks bewildered.

"Yeah you did, you said you thought I was guilty. Outside the pub, you said it to my face."

"About the other thing, yeah, beating him up. Not the sex thing, no way." He's angry, and he's telling the truth – it's blazing out of him. "D'you really think I thought you'd do that to someone? I know I... I should've believed you about all of it, right, but you can't hardly blame me for thinking you battered him."

He touches one of the wounds you inflicted on his face, and the shame you feel competes with the relief you feel that he never thought you were a sex attacker. Both have weighed heavily on you.

"I'm sorry, Steven. Hurting you, it's the worst thing I've ever done, worse than... worse than anything. I'm sorry."

He looks at you seriously for a long while. There's a little horizontal crease that forms between his eyebrows when he frowns, and you'd love to smooth it away with your thumb.

"I know you're sorry, Brendan. I know you are." And he does, he believes that you are truly repentant. He believes it without reservation, it's written in his eyes: he knows pain when he sees it, this boy, and his response is not judgement but absolution. "Now can we not talk about it any more, please?"

For once he looks older than his age, as if everything that's happened over the last hours and days and weeks has caught up with him. You can't burden him with the truth about Seamus now, in case it's the thing that breaks him. After all this time, it can wait a few more hours.

You lie looking at each other. The minutes pass, and you don't dare fall asleep in case he's gone when you wake again and it turns out this was a dream after all.

His gaze slides up from your eyes.

"I like your hair when it's like this," he says, and touches it briefly with his finger tips.

"Like what?" you ask. His words and gesture have taken you by surprise: his voice is still thick and punctuated by sniffs in the aftermath of his tears, and yet he says a thing like that.

"When it's got all the whatsit washed out of it – "

"Gel."

"Product," he says.

"_Product_?"

"Yeah, so it's all sort of, like, soft. Like your moustache."

"You're daft."

"Shut up. And I like it cos it's only me that sees it like that."

His eyes are sleepy, their lashes dark and heavy with lingering tears. His hair is messy where you grabbed it while you fucked him, spiked from the sweat of your palms, a collage of blonds and browns in the lamplight.

"I like your hair when it's like that," you tell him, and you comb your fingers through it.

"Like what?"

"Shagged."

He smiles, and you can taste his smile when he kisses you, and you can taste where the tears and snot have dried above his lip, and you can feel his dishevelled hair between your fingers. His hand rests on your face, and stays there when you separate to look at each other again. Those extra years have fallen away from him, and he's just your boy.

You kiss again, and this time when you part he takes your hand and feeds your fingers into his mouth, and then moves his hand down and wraps it around your cock. You watch him sucking, and feel his tongue coating your fingers with spit, and your blood floods hotly towards your groin.

He rolls from his side onto his back.

Jesus.

You half lie on him, and you nudge his thighs apart with your knee. You kiss him when you slip your fingers out of his mouth, and you feel between his legs and under him and feel his ring, and push inside with two. Not much pushing required, as his muscles are weakened and barely resist, so you pull your two fingers out and then go straight back in with three. He makes an _Ah_ of surprise into your mouth, and tenses, and you kiss him til he settles.

You can fuck him now. You want to, and he's ready, so you take your hand away and shift so that you're fully on top of him.

"Not yet," he says. "Do it more."

"Do what?"

"You know. What you was doing."

"Tell me." You sit back on your haunches between his legs and look down at him, and you almost laugh: there he lies, spread out in front of you, cock pointing at the ceiling, and yet he's blushing to say the words.

"With your hand. You _know_... Like, fingering."

"Like this?" You hook your fingers inside him again and turn your hand.

"Fuck... fuck..."

He strokes his foot up the outside of your thigh, and then moves it across and rests his heel at your crotch, and your cock strains against its pressure. You're still working with your hand, your thumb rubbing his balls, and his mouth is open and red and wet and you want to kiss him, but when you start to lean forward his foot comes up to the middle of your chest to stop you, and you see a flicker of a smile. He knows how to tease you as much as he knows how to please you.

You take hold of his foot with your free hand and kiss its sole. He's ticklish, and his toes convulse and so does his hole around your fingers. You watch his face, and he looks amazed that you would kiss his feet, but he shouldn't be: of course you would kiss them, and you would wash them and dry them too if he wanted. Your own personal Jesus.

You sling his foot aside and it drops heavily onto the mattress. You withdraw your fingers from him and you fall forward, your hands on the bed either side of his shoulders, and the tired muscles of your arms protest as they take your weight when you lower yourself to kiss him.

"I'm gonna fuck you now." You say it into his ear, and lick a line across his cheek to his mouth.

The way he looks at you makes every nerve in your skin bristle: his pupils are huge and black, and blacker in the shadows of his lashes, and shining darkly.

You glide your tip across his rim, feel it react to you. He bends his legs at the hips and folds them around your back.

You hesitate. Can you really do this, when in a few hours' time you're going to tell him something that's likely to repel him from you? Should you do this, when he's about to find out that your sexual power is a myth?

Your answer is that you can't _not_. Not when he's burning like the sun for you; you're not strong enough to resist, and you need him. So you line yourself up and watch his face as you try him, pause til he relaxes for you, and then begin to push inside him.

"Ow," he says, and his bottom lip juts out.

You hold back, and you ask, "You sore from before?"

"Yeah."

"Wanna stop?"

"No."

"You sure, Steven?"

"Just fuck me."

So you take him. He groans and frowns, and then his body adjusts around you, and then he's panting, open-mouthed, and he's looking into your eyes, right into you, and in the moments before you lose yourself, you wonder if this is the last time he'll look at you as if you are the moon and the stars.

Everything stops mattering, except him. Your world consists of the texture of his skin, the sounds you make him make, the fierce, searching look in his eyes, daring you to look away. The pleasure that ripples through you is turned into an urge to make him feel it too. As much as you want him, you need him to want you more. And he reads you like he always does, rewards you with what you want, his pelvis rising off the bed to meet your thrusts, his limbs keeping you close, his hands grabbing at your flesh, greedy and possessive. One hand moves in between your bodies – he wants to touch himself, but you tell him _No_, and he complies, flings both his hands onto the pillow above his head as if they're lashed to the bed. The muscles inside him grip you like a fist and wring you out, and you come, violently, and your heart stops and you're blinded by the light.

His body is alive with tension and on the brink. You slide out of him, and you're breathing hard as you take him into your mouth. His cock is smooth on your tongue, its taste is clean. Almost as soon as you close your lips around him, he comes, and you suck him til his last shudder dies away. Then you're in each other's arms, his face buried in your chest, and his heart is beating so hard that you can feel it shaking his ribs.

You don't kiss him, because he doesn't always want to kiss you when your mouth tastes of his cum – but this time he does, softly, and you kiss until his head lolls back and he falls asleep.

:::::::

You've bathed and shaved, and you've put on a suit, and you're putting its hanger back on the rail.

"You going to work?"

You wanted to leave him sleeping, but he's awake and you turn and look at him, and you wonder if he watched you while you dressed.

"Yeah. Wanna have another look at the books, you know, get some orders in for if people start coming again, now that... now that the other thing's over, they might..."

"They will, Bren, we just got to give it time." He sits up. "You know what this village is like, word gets round, and it's gonna be Kevin that gets it in the neck now, innit."

"Yeah." You hope he's right, but you've got a feeling the mud will stick to you. "You taking the day off, yeah?"

"Probably, yeah."

"Good lad. Get your head down. Coffee's there, so." You'd made yourself a cup and put it down on the bedside cabinet while you dressed, but he can have it now that he's awake.

"Ta."

You step across to the bed and brush his hair off his forehead, then tilt his face up with your fingers under his chin. His bruises are fading – he heals quickly, this lad – but they still faintly discolour his cheekbone and his eye sockets, and there are scabs where you made him bleed.

He knows what you're thinking; you don't need to say anything. You bend and quickly kiss his forehead, and then you go.

:::::::

You're at the club, but you're not checking the books. It's a different book you need to look at.

Yesterday was your day of reckoning, according to Walker, but it's something else he said that is going around in your head, and you're trying to figure it out but it's another one of his puzzles and you can't find the answer. _I've left a little present for your family. A last minute parting gift that is gonna tear their lives apart_. That was what he said, and you couldn't ask him what he meant because that was the moment when you had to kill him.

You're looking in the Bible for answers, but all it's telling you is what it's always told you: that you are a sinner, and that there's no forgiveness without repentance.

There are things that you don't repent, but there are things that you do, and for those things – the things for which you are truly sorry – Steven has forgiven you. You wonder, as you turn the pages, what it is that's stopping you from forgiving your dad. Walker wanted you to, and you'll never know why that's what he wanted, but you do know that you couldn't do it even with a gun to your head. You wonder if maybe your failure to believe without reservation in Seamus's apology is a deficiency in you, not him; maybe his _Sorry_ to you comes from as deep a place as yours to Steven, and the sin Seamus is sorry for gives him the same pain as yours gives you. Maybe he is trustworthy, and you're just not a good enough man to trust him.

You hear Steven's quiet footsteps coming up the stairs. You look up at him as he hovers over you. He looks tentative, concerned.

"Brought you some brunch," he says, and puts it down on the low table in front of the couch where you're sitting. It's a paper bag with a sandwich in it, you guess; and an apple, shiny like he's polished it.

"I don't deserve you."

He sits down on the couch opposite yours, and asks what you're reading. You show him, and he doesn't say anything. You know he doesn't share your beliefs, or your struggle to reconcile yourself with them. _Did you think God was just gonna strike you down with lightning? _he said to you once. _What century do you live in?_

When he speaks again, it's to tell you that Walker's finally gone, so it's over; but you have to tell him that it's not. The pin has been pulled from the grenade, and it's only a matter of time before... Before what? You don't know, but you do know that it's not over.

"What d'you mean?" he asks. "He's gone, right, and this can be our new start, now there's no one coming after us. Here, maybe you can talk to Eileen, Brendan, see if she'll let your kids come over in the holidays."

"She won't."

"She might. The court case is all cancelled, and if she knows what you've been through – "

"They're better off without me. I'm... I don't even know how to be a dad, Steven. My boys deserve better."

"You do know. You _are_ better. Maybe you didn't used to be, but look at what you're like with Leah and Lucas, right, they love you because you're a great dad. And you're not telling me you're just gonna give up your boys to Martin or whatever his name is – "

"Michael."

"Michael. Because I know you, and you're not going to let him win."

You smile at his fierceness.

"It's not just that though, Steven. I just... I think they're safer where they are, til I know what Walker..." You pause. "Something he said, just before he died. The words keep banging around inside my head and I can't get rid of them."

"He was lost. Probably just said anything that he knew would get under your skin."

"_One last parting gift_," you quote Walker to Steven,"_That's gonna rip your little world apart_."

Steven tells you that he still thinks you should tell the police, so that they'll know the man they're looking for is dead. But it's not the police you're worried about: that's not the grenade. The grenade is Walker's knowledge of what your father did to you, and you don't know where it's going to explode, so you've got to take it into your own hands.

"What are you worried about, then?"

"There's something I should've told you, Steven, something I should've told you a long time ago," you say, and you don't know what he's expecting but he makes some smart remark about skeletons and closets, but you're not losing your nerve, not this time. "What I told you about my dad... what he did to me. You got the watered down version."

"You said that he beat you up," he says, and he's dropped the cynical bite of his last response.

"Yeah, he did. And then he made it up to me... in his own special way."

"What does that mean? Brendan?"

You force yourself to glance at him, and when you do, he looks frightened.

"My dad... Seamus, he abused me."

He's working out what it is that you're telling him.

"No. No, not..."

"Yes. He sexually abused me."

You see Steven move, only it's more like you sense that he's going to move. But what you can't sense is whether his movement will be away from you or towards you, and you don't have the strength to cope with either possibility. So you shake your head, or he senses that you're going to shake your head, and he stays where he is.

"When?" he asks, and his voice is small.

"First time? I was... I was eight, Steven."

"Eight?"

"Yes."

"Did he... When you were eight, it wasn't... he didn't rape you?"

"What?" Rape is what men do to women, isn't it? You've never thought of it being the word for what happened to you, and for a moment you think you're going to be sick because now that Steven has said it, you know that it's the right word.

"Brendan?"

"I didn't even... The first few times, I didn't even know what he... what it was that he was hurting me with, not til... til this time I nearly got away and when he grabbed me back, I saw. Saw him, his... How stupid was I? Not knowing – "

"You weren't stupid. You were a little kid, how could you know? You're not meant to know, Brendan, not when you're a... just a little kid."

He's crying.

"You okay, Steven?"

"Am _I_ okay? For fucksake, Bren." He wipes his sleeve across his face. "Didn't anyone realise what he was doing?"

"It was a secret. He said that. Kept saying it, kept saying it was our secret cos I was... special, only the rest of the time he was hating on me, shaming me, you know? If anyone found out, they'd think I was... he said they'd think I was a... And that's if they believed me anyway. I didn't want it, though, Steven, I – "

"Course you didn't want it!"

"I didn't."

"I know."

"I just wanted someone to ask, you know? Someone just to say, _What's wrong, Brendan?_ Someone to see... There was this one time, I was still young, maybe still eight, nine, and I... We were staying at our nana's house in the holidays, and... The bed got messed, see, the sheets, my pyjamas. I dunno, blood and shit on them..." Are you testing Steven, by telling him this? You are – you think you are – and you look at him expecting to see disgust, but instead he looks stricken. "So I stripped them off, three in the morning or something, went downstairs and put them in the washing machine but I couldn't... I didn't know how to work it, I was pressing all the switches, turning the dial, just blindly, you know, cos I didn't put the light on in case I woke anyone up. Then the light goes on anyhow, and Nana's there, and I think, she's gonna ask me now, ain't she? She's gonna ask what I'm doing, trying to wash my bedsheets at three o'clock in the fucking morning, when I never even made my own fucking bed before. I'm thinking, she's gonna ask and then she'll see the mess on the sheets, and she's gonna make me tell her what's been going on, and then it's gonna stop. Whatever she thinks of me, it's gonna stop. But what she did was... all she did was, she said, it's this switch and it's this number and you press that button there."

"So nobody found out?"

"Nobody stopped him."

"How long did it go on for?"

"A few years."

"Years?" He closes his eyes and rubs them with the heels of his hands. "D'you remember, that time you said about when you went away with him for a weekend, camping, and you come back with a broken arm? And you told me he did it to you? Was he still... was he still abusing you then?"

"Yeah. I didn't want to go, see. Just him and me, I knew why he wanted to go: just the two of us in this old tent. So, you know what I did? When he told me to get the tent out of the car, I... It was one of those old heavy canvas ones, you know, with the poles to hold it up, so I thought – bright idea – I'll hide the tent poles so we can't put it up, and we'll have to turn around and come straight home again. Only we didn't come straight home." You remember your dad's rage when he found out what you'd done; you remember what he did when you ran and he caught you. "Angriest I ever seen him," you say. "Then in the car, he's driving me to the hospital and he's saying, I told you not to climb that tree, and I ask him, what tree, Dad? What tree? And he says, the one you fell out of and broke your arm. And it's... it was like, by the time the doctor asked me what happened, it was like I believed it myself. It was like, Seamus said it, and it was so."

"So he got away with it."

"I don't know, Steven. He don't think so, he thinks he's going to Hell. But he's confessed now, to me: admitted to me that it all happened, first time ever, over the road there when Walker had us tied up. _Therefore, confess your sins to one another and pray for one another, that you may be healed. _So maybe that's it, maybe now he's confessed it, he gets his absolution."

"Do you believe that?"

"Don't know. Didn't work for me, so." You tell him how you once stole some money from your mother's purse, blew it all on cola bottles, but then you got it into your head that what you were going through – what your dad was putting you through – was the punishment you'd earned for it. _Thou shalt not steal_. So you said sorry to God, every night, and you'd pray for him to keep your dad away. "But then I'd hear his feet on the landing, then I realised that either God wasn't listening, or he just plain didn't like me."

Steven is quiet. What you've told him must be hard to process, finding out that you're not the man he thought you were, not the man he wanted.

"Why didn't you tell me?" he asks, and there's something in his voice but you can't pin it down: you never could tell the difference between pity and compassion, and you're not even sure if there is one.

"Cos I didn't want you to look at me the way you're looking at me now... Damaged goods."

"I don't think that."

He's protesting, but he's working it out, isn't he? What your dad made you: ugly, inside and out. He says he isn't thinking it, but he must be. He must be. And you're sounding pathetic even to yourself, giving yourself excuses as if everything you've done is down to your dad – all of the things you've done, and the things you keep doing to Steven.

He tells you that you're not going to do that to him again, because you're better than your dad. He's fierce as he says it, like he would defend you to the ends of the earth, but he's not seeing you as you really are. He seems to think you deserve his understanding, but how can that be true?

"Thousands of kids go through what I went through," you say. "None of them turn out like this... like me. _The son shall not suffer for the iniquity of the father, nor the father suffer for the iniquity of the son_. I learnt that." You learnt the rest of it, too: _The righteousness of the righteous shall be upon himself, and the wickedness of the wicked shall be upon himself._ Your dad is accountable before God for his own wickedness, but not for yours.

"He can't just get away with it," Steven says.

You tell him that you thought – you _think_ – that you'd got somewhere, you and your dad. Progress, after all these years, and you're trying to convince Steven that it's true, because you want it to be true, and if you can convince Steven then maybe you can convince yourself. _Sorry_, your dad said to you. _Sorry._

He doesn't respond to that. Maybe it's all too fresh for him to imagine that progress is possible; or maybe his instincts are right, and there are some things that can't be forgiven, even with a heart as big as his.

He asks about Cheryl, and you tell him she will never know. Your own childhood was spent trying to protect hers, and you can't have hers destroyed now, you tell Steven, "That's if she would even believe me."

"Course she'll believe you." He almost smiles, as if the idea of your sister doubting you is ridiculous to him.

"My whole life has been mapped out by the fear of asking one question: why would anybody believe me? Why?"

"I do, I believe you." And he does. He really does, and you try to focus on the light he's brought into your dark as he tells you that your dad can't hurt you any more.

Still, if this is closure, it doesn't feel how you thought it would, and Steven thinks it's because there's something you've got to do.

"What's that?"

"Tell Cheryl. And not for me, not for her. You gotta do this for you, Brendan."

When did this boy get so wise? Maybe he always has been, but you had to learn to listen.

"I know you're right, Steven, but it's... she's my baby sister, she's her daddy's little girl, ain't she. It's going to break her heart."

"But you'll do it. I mean, what if her and Nate have kids, what if – ?"

"I warned Nate. Didn't tell him why, just told him to keep their sons away from him."

"Oh god," he says, "When you wouldn't let Cheryl have Leah and Lucas at her place to babysit, you were protecting them, weren't you? In case he was there?"

"Yes."

"What about your own kids?"

"Eileen knows what my dad's like. Always knew, from when we were kids. Not the... other stuff but the violence. People were scared of him, you know, he had a reputation, and she knew I was always coming to school with a black eye or whatever."

"She knew it was him that did that?"

"I told her, when she was pregnant, first time. We went round together to tell my dad and Chez's ma about the baby, and I thought... I thought maybe he'd be pleased. Jesus, I must've been stupid to even – "

"You're not stupid, Brendan."

"See, I thought it'd stop him with all the... the _Brenda_ stuff, the calling me a queer, and... But it didn't. He was okay when we told them, but soon as he got me on my own he gave me the worst hiding I ever had, and that's when I told Eileen that he's been thumping me all my life. Made her promise there and then that she'd never let him near our kid, whatever he said, whatever he did to try and get round her. She was only a wee girl, sixteen, and having to patch me up like that, the... the shock of it for her, I knew that she would keep her word."

"All that..." He searches for the phrase. "All that _burden_ you been carrying, Bren. I could've helped you if you'd told me."

"I wanted to. I tried. I just never was brave enough."

"Until today."

"Until today." You stand up. "Want a drink?"

"I'll get it," he says, and you sit down again, and he goes and gets a bottle of Jameson's from behind the bar, and two glasses. "There's no ice in the buckets, shall I go and get some or..?"

"Can't get the staff," you say. "I'm okay if you are."

He comes and sits next to you on the couch, and you slop the neat whiskey into the glasses.

You both drink, and he coughs. It makes you smile, and he catches you.

"I know," he says, "It's gonna put hairs on my chest."

"It works for me, so."

You both drink in silence. You're glad to have him sat beside you now, but you're surprised that he wants to be, because things surely can't be the same between you now he's seen you for what you are.

He's obviously thinking things over, trying to fit the past into the new shape you've given it. When you sneak a look at him, he's chewing his lip like when he's helping Leah with her homework.

He takes a gulp of his drink.

"I told you to man up," he says, so softly that you only just catch what he says.

His eyes are full, and a single tear brims over and trickles down his cheek. Maybe it's the burn of the alcohol.

"I couldn't help it, Steven, there was nothing I could do, I was a kid and he was... he was in his prime, you know? In his twenties when it started, and he was strong, I couldn't – "

"I'm not... Brendan, I'm not telling you to man up. I wouldn't – I would _never_, not now. I'm saying, I said it to you before, didn't I?" he explains, and your hammering heart starts to settle down. "That day he came here and he tried to give you some of his winnings, and he said he would buy you dinner, and you went all weird on me, and when he went we had that row, do you remember? And I told you to man up, and I... I'm so sorry. How could I be so – ?"

"It's okay. You didn't know, Steven, and that's my fault, okay?"

His crying isn't from the whiskey, it's for you. You touch his face, and wipe away his tears with a sweep of your thumb. You half expect him to shrink from your touch, but he doesn't. Even so, you take your hand away.

"You're twice the man he'll ever be," he says. "You know that, Brendan, right? You're the bravest man I know."

"It's not a brave man that does that to you," you tell him, and you look at his battered face.

He shakes his head.

"I know why you went mad, with what Kevin said you did to him. It's like the worst thing anyone could ever say about you, after what your dad did to you. No wonder it was killing you."

"Still no excuse."

"No. It's not an excuse, but it's a reason. But that's the last time. It's got to be the last time, Brendan, it's the only chance we've got of having a future. It's got to never happen again."

_A future_.

"It won't. It won't happen again, ever, I promise."

"You need to get help though. Proper help I mean, anger management, like I had. I'll come with you for support, right, but you've got to do it. Will you do that? For us, Brendan, for you and me."

Anything. You will do anything. Nothing can be as hard as telling him what you've told him today, and if he still wants to be with you, if he wants _a future_ with you, you will do whatever it takes.

"Yes." You've never been more serious.

"Yes?"

"Yes."

He smiles, and he's beautiful, and he leans and kisses you. You're taken by surprise: his kiss feels the same as ever, it's not non-committal, it's not careful, it's not treating you like someone different than you were when you last kissed a few hours ago.

It's you that's not ready. You feel exhausted. You pour another drink, and you're shaking, and the neck of the bottle clinks an erratic rhythm against the rim of each glass. When you sit back again, Steven leans into your side, and you put your arm around his shoulders, and his warmth spreads to you as he cuddles up.

He's getting used to the whiskey.

"Here," he says, "We should eat this, we've not had anything." He reaches for the paper bag on the table, and rips it open.

"What's in it?" You're surprised to find that you've got an appetite; maybe it's the Jameson's that's done it.

"_Prosciutto e_ _Fontina_," he says, and then he grins. "That's what Doug would call it, and he would've made it with one of them posh breads he goes on about. Ham and cheese, on sliced white. There you go."

He takes half the sandwich, and you pick up the other half.

"I'll have to thank him," you say.

"Why? Doug didn't make it, I did."

"No, I mean for finding you and Chez when you were trapped."

"Oh, right."

"It's good," you say as you swallow a mouthful of sandwich. "Steven, how did him and Nate know where to look for you?"

"They got into the hospital ward and they made Kevin tell them." He picks out of his sandwich one of the pickles that you like and he doesn't, and feeds it to you. "Doug said his face was well mashed."

"Ain't that a shame."

"I'd bloody... If I ever see him again..."

You've never seen hate in Steven before. When he hated you, it was nothing like this.

"He ain't worth getting sent down for," you tell him.

"What he did to us, though. Accusing you of that."

"I know."

You both finish eating in silence. Steven is the one to break it, and his vitriol has gone as quickly as it came.

"You know when we first got together? Well, when Amy found out that we were... that you, you know... that you hit me..." He glances at you apologetically. "Anyway, she asked me about... She asked me if you ever, like, forced me or – "

"Jesus, Steven."

"No, she was just... She didn't know you, did she, and I said to her, like, no way. I told her you was amazing in bed, and I told her you was... You know, the first time we... I told her you was dead gentle."

Jesus.

"She believe you?"

"Yeah, she did. She said that when I come home after that first night – you remember, when I stayed over at yours?"

"Yes, Steven. I remember." You will remember it until you're in your grave.

"She said that when I come home, I was, like, glowing."

He's blushing.

"_Amazing in bed_," you say, and he grows pinker. "I thought Amy Barnes looked at me funny. Apart from how she always looked at me funny."

You both become quiet again. He's tucked against your side still, your arm around him, and he's picking at a tiny nick in the knee of your trousers where they must have caught on something. You rest your hand on his, and stroke the back of it absently with your thumb.

He's pensive when he speaks again.

"You was talking about your dad, weren't you, when you was outside the deli and I was hiding in there? When you said... you said he took everything away from you, and you forgot how to be normal."

"Yes."

"And I made you think that the world can be..."

"That the world could be good again."

"And it can be, Brendan, right. I mean, if you think about it, it's... after everything you went through, it's amazing that you... that you love so much."

"That's what Anne said about you." You swallow, and there's a lump in your throat. "It's... it's down to you, Steven. It's down to you not giving up on me, I guess, making me think that maybe there was a... another way for me to be. And if I'm an okay dad to Leah and Lucas, that's because for the first time in my life I got to see what a good dad is, and that's you."

You become aware of him staring at you.

"You look knackered," he says.

"Oh, cheers for that," you say, but you know he's right.

"Why don't you have a kip for a bit, yeah? It's not like you've got any customers. I'll get off, and I'll see you later."

You both stand up, and he wraps his arms around your waist. Pain shoots through your body from the bruises from your fight with Walker, but you wouldn't have Steven loosen his hold on you, not for anything, so you embrace him and pull him tighter against you.

"You're a good lad. You know that, don't you?"

"I love you too," he says. "Now, eat your apple, it's good for you."

You walk him to the fire escape door and open it onto the balcony, and you both stand in the doorway. After being cocooned inside, the daylight makes you feel exposed.

Anne was right about Steven, turns out. ___Let him know you_, she said, that day you told her what your dad was. ___He deserves to know the truth. After everything that you two have been through, you think you can scare him away?_

He's not scared. It's you that's the scared one.

"Told you what I think you should do," he says, and he's talking about telling Cheryl the truth about her dad.

You've spent the past quarter century protecting her from Seamus, and protecting her from knowing about him, and you don't know what will happen to her and to you if you explode that grenade. You're her brother, and you're meant to stand in between her and the monsters.

You tell Steven it's a bad idea, but in his head it's obviously clear that it's the right thing to do, and he tells you that you've got nothing to be ashamed of.

"I been ashamed my whole life."

What he does then is, he comes closer, and he takes your face in his hands, and he kisses you. He kisses you twice, and it feels as if he's trying to kiss you into believing that everything will be alright in the end.

You kiss him back, but your arms stay folded in front of you.

He leans his forehead against yours, and he's still holding your face when he says, "I love you, and you love me. That's all that matters."

You do love him, more than ever, more than you thought it was possible for one person to love another, and you hate that you've brought so much danger into his life, so much pain, so much that he would never have had to deal with if it wasn't for you.

"Maybe in the next life you'll get a better me. One you'll deserve, yeah?"

"No," he says, and he lets go of you and steps back a little, and he's smiling. "Because after today, we get our happy ever after."

He can see your doubts but still he smiles, and he nods his head as he goes out of the door, as if he's saying, _I'm right_ – and you think, maybe he is. Maybe if you take the step he wants you to take, then somehow your happy ever after will begin and the world will be beautiful again.

The Spring is starting to appear at last, but the sunlight still has the paleness of Winter, and as Steven crosses the street he casts no shadow. You watch him until he disappears from sight, and you try and hold in your mind that image of him in the light, as you close the door and go back into the dark of the club.


	22. Chapter 22

**Note**

This story is almost finished now. After this chapter, there'll be just one more.

* * *

You've been to sleep. You don't know how long for, and you don't much care. _Why don't you have a kip for a bit, yeah? _That's what Steven said, and that's what you've done._ It's not like you've got any customers. I'll get off, and I'll see you later._

You swing your legs off the arm of the couch and sit up, and run your fingers through your hair. The apple he brought you is still sitting there on the low table in front of you, and you remember him telling you before he left the club, _Now, eat your apple, it's good for you. _It makes you smile: you like that the voice in your head is his.

You eat it.

There are other things he said today, and they're in your head too. _Tell Cheryl_. And, _Course she'll believe you_. You think maybe he's right about the first of those things, about telling her. You feel better for telling Steven, as if the clouds have parted and let the sun find its way through, after all that time you spent fearing him knowing. You still don't know what it will be like when you sleep together again now that he knows what he knows about you, and you know you'll be on the lookout for any signs of equivocation in him, anything that proves that you were right all along and that his desire for you is not what it was, because you're not what he thought you were. But you have hope, because he loves you. You have hope that you will find your way through this, together, and with Steven by your side you hope that you and Cheryl will survive it too – that's if Steven is right about the second thing – that she'll believe you.

There is another reason for telling Cheryl. If you do, Seamus will surely go away.

You plan it. You will text her first, ask her to come over here to the club, and when she comes you'll say to her, _I love you and I never wanted to hurt you. I love you and I wanted to keep you safe. But you deserve the truth, Chez, and you can punch me and hate me and scream at me, and I'll stand here and take it, but it's the truth, I promise you_. And it's a burden you've carried, like Steven said, and you're tired. So tired. So you'll tell her, and you'll ride the punches and the hate and the screams, and you'll hold her when she cries, and you'll tell her that it's better – it doesn't feel like it to you or to her, but it is better – that she hears it from you. You're convinced that Walker's parting gift has some link with what he coaxed and cajoled and threatened out of you and your dad when he held you captive, and you can't sit back and wait for it to be delivered to your sister. Whatever _it_ is. You need her to find out gently, and when you tell her, you will tell her you're sorry. You're so, so sorry.

You stand up, gather up your apple core and the paper bag from the sandwich you shared with Steven, and the glasses from the whiskey you shared with him, and get rid of them behind the bar. You get a clean tumbler and another bottle of whiskey, but then you don't pour one, because you're not going to find your courage at the bottom of a glass – sometimes you can, but for this conversation you want a clear head. You put on your jacket in the hope that it will make you feel more together and in control of the situation; you sit down on a bar stool and you get out your phone, and you think of when the bravest man you know told you that you're the bravest man he knows, and that's where you take your courage from.

You type out a message to your sister. _Something I need to tell ye. Come to club_.

Someone's coming up the stairs.

Your dad. Your dad is coming up the stairs, and he's drunk.

"Ah, so this is where you're hiding." He claps you on the shoulder, and he climbs onto the stool next to yours, and you wait for whatever it is he's come here to say, and you try to keep your breathing steady as you look at him. When he speaks again it's to slur out a question: "Did you speak to your sister?"

It takes you by surprise. How would he know you were going to speak to Cheryl? You get a grip on yourself, though, because he doesn't – he couldn't – know what you're planning to say to her, and you just tell him that you were about to. And then as soon as he's established that you haven't talked to her yet, he gives you her news himself: she's leaving. She's going back to Ireland for a better life, he tells you, and you wonder if that is why he's gone out and got pissed, and you ask him if that's what he's come to your club to tell you.

He puts his hand on your forearm. There's nothing sinister about that, though, because things have changed between you, now that he's confessed to you what he did. _Confess your sins to one another and pray for one another, that you may be healed. _Just because he's come up those stairs pissed, come up close to you, put his hand on you, and you can smell the fags and whiskey on his breath, it doesn't mean things haven't changed between you.

Your mind is racing. You thought maybe Cheryl might go off with her fella, and that's fine, isn't it? That's fine, she'll be away from Seamus, and maybe once she's gone, he'll go too, and then you and Steven will be able to get on with your lives here, or even sell up and move away yourselves for a whole new start, since you'll have nothing to tie you to this place. And in the same instant, you think maybe now you don't have to tell Cheryl what Seamus did to you, because you'll all be away from him; and as soon as you think it, you remember Steven's words, and you know that you still need to get out from under the burden of keeping it secret.

Seamus answers your question about why he's come here. It wasn't just to tell you that Cheryl is leaving – it was also to thank you, he says, "For driving my daughter away from me."

There's no mistaking his hostility now, or his mood, and you shake his hand off your arm. You don't understand what he's saying, and you ask him, "Me?"

"You don't think that she's sick of living in the same village with her filthy queer brother?" He's drunk but his speech is clear, and you wish you could believe that you're wrong, that you heard it wrong. You challenge him, ask him what he said, and he looks at you how he's always looked at you, as if you're the biggest mistake of his life, and he tells you, "I didn't say anything. I just asked the question: do you not think she's sick of living in the same village as her filthy queer brother? Did you hear me better that time?"

He doesn't blink.

You stand up, step back from him.

It's not you. You thought your suspicion of him was a failing in you, that you weren't a good enough man to accept his repentance and forgive him: but it's not you, is it? It was an act, a tactic to save his skin, and the progress you thought you'd made was an illusion. You say to him, "You said you were sorry," and the confirmation that he isn't sorry is like a blow to the chest, and you don't know what's left to hold on to.

He starts talking, and you remember him like this, getting voluble when he'd had a few, and coming out the other side of his haze and somehow focusing as he talked, but as if the thing that he was focusing on was something inside him. It unnerved you then, and it unnerves you now. You watch him as he starts talking about his own dad – your granddad – and about how the old man beat him as a kid, and about how he swore to himself he'd get back at him as soon as he grew big enough but it never happened. And about how that man scared him to death.

What's he saying? Is he telling you something? You can't figure out if you're meant to feel sorry for him, or –

Then he turns it on you, as if you are the same as him. "There you are now," he says, "Standing there thinking, now it's my time to pay back my old man for knocking me about. Well, go ahead. I'm all yours. Hit me, if you're man enough."

You are not the same as him. _He knows what he is now_, that's what Steven said, and, _You're twice the man he'll ever be_.

"You didn't just knock me about, though, did you, Dad? You abused me."

"What's going on in that twisted mind of yours?"

He's doing it again, what he used to do, making out that what he says is the truth, and that's what the world will believe. And you know what the real truth is but you feel him bending it, corrupting it, and you can't stand it, and you tell him, "You said it. You said you were sorry. Said you couldn't stop yourself." And then the thought, the one that was there like a shadow when he spoke about his father, solidifies and you grasp it. "Did he do it to you too? Your dad?"

"What's that?"

"Well, it's gotta start from somewhere, doesn't it." You want your words to hurt him. You don't know if he was a victim like you, and in this moment you don't care a damn about the child that he was. You just want him to feel how he made you feel, weak and defiled and ashamed.

"You'd better shut your sick mouth." His hands are wrapped around the whiskey bottle, and his knuckles are whitening.

"I might be a dirty little queer, but I'm twice the man that you'll ever be."

"Good on you." He speaks without looking at you. "I hope you feel better now, getting that off your chest, standing up to your old man."

"We both know what you are."

The bottle in his hands is pointing at you, like some kind of fucking phallic threat, and you see him rally, and he slides his hands down its sides as he puts it down on the bar, and he stands and turns to you, and he smiles.

"We still have our little secret, haven't we, Brenda." He comes towards you, and he opens his arms to you. "Come here to me."

He thinks he can make you do that. He thinks you are his.

"It's not gonna be a secret for much longer, Dad."

"Is that so?" he says, and you nod your head, and you're going to tell him that you will take his daughter away from him and he'll have no love left in his life – but you don't get the chance, because his fist comes from nowhere and lands in your gut and fells you.

As you crumble, you hear your phone ringing on the bar, and your dad goes over to it, reads the screen, tells you, "It's that pretty little boy of yours. Want to ask him to join the party?"

You scramble half to your feet but he hits you again, gets you off balance, and your phone stops ringing, and you're down, and he's circling you, and there's nothing you can do because he's your dad, and your dad doesn't stop. Your phone rings again but it makes no difference, and it stops again. Nothing makes a difference. If you hear the sound of the television downstairs and you know someone's there watching it, it makes no difference. If there's someone in the bedroom on the other side of your wall, it makes no difference. If you plead with him, _Dad_, it makes no difference, but you do it anyhow and he hits you again.

"You know what? I think you secretly liked it."

"No." _No_. You crawl away from him. _No_.

"Yeah. That's why you never told anybody, that's why you never ran away. You loved the attention."

"Stay away from me." You're cowering, and he's over you, and he's blocking out the light. "Stay away from me."

"No." He's taking off his jacket. "You've been a bad boy."

"No. I haven't," you tell him, but you have, and you are, and you always were, and your dad sees it because he is everywhere.

"And you know what happens" – and his voice is calm and you say, _No, no_ – "When you've been a bad boy."

"No, Dad, please." But _please_ never works, and he laughs and he's down on you and he's got your wrists. "Please, Dad."

And then he stops.

That's not how this goes. Nobody stops him – except somebody has. Your dad stares down at you, and you see the life die in his eyes, and he slumps to the floor beside you, and you don't know what just happened. And then your mind starts to join together, and there was a noise, wasn't there? A gunshot is what stopped him, and you look up, and your sister is standing at the top of the stairs just a few feet from you, and she's holding a gun. She's holding it out in front of her in both hands, like actors do in cop shows, and that's what this feels like – as if it's all just playing out in front of you and you don't know how the story ends, and there's no off switch.

She starts trembling, and the sounds she makes go straight to your heart, and you get to your feet. Your sister needs you to be the one who takes care of her and takes care of everything. The terror you were feeling a few seconds ago, you bury in the dark inside you where you've always had to keep it, and you go to your sister and you hold her, and you prise the gun from her hand and put it down, and you tell her it's okay. Nothing is okay. Everything is over. But you tell her, it's okay.

You turn her around, away from the dead body of her father, and you sit her on the stairs, and your phone rings again. Cheryl pleads with you not to answer it, and you tell her, "It's gonna be Steven, he's gonna think something's wrong."

"Please... please."

You want to speak to him. You want to hear his voice, but your sister is in front of you and she's scared, and _please_ works on you, so you say, "Yeah, yeah okay, it's okay."

You wonder if he'll give up now.

Cheryl is paralysed with distress.

"I know," she says to you, and her voice is a choking whisper. "I know what he did to you."

"What are you talking about?" you ask, but you know what she's talking about. You don't know how she has found out, but she has found out what your dad was.

Her words come in a rush now. She tells you she found the gun in the flat – Walker's gun, she must have figured that out – and then she says she got a delivery, and it was a USB, and, "I watched it and it was you and Daddy in the house..."

That's it, then. This was Walker's parting gift, sent to blow your family apart. This was the grenade.

You never should have let her find out like this. Steven was right, like he's always right when you're stupid and scared.

You swear to Cheryl that you wanted to tell her, but you don't think she's hearing you because she just keeps on telling you what happened. She ran, she says, to come and find you, and then she saw what he was doing to you – what he was about to do to you – and then the gun was in her hand, and she killed him.

She saved you.

"It was an accident," you tell her, "You understand what I'm saying? It was an accident."

You make her stay where she is, and you go to where your dad is lying. His eyes are open, and you know this sight of him is going to jostle with the other visions of him that already haunt your dreams. You get his jacket and cover his face with it. His hand is already cold when you hold it, and he's your dad and he's dead. You feel sick.

Cheryl hasn't stayed where she was like you told her to. She's got up off the stairs and she's seen your dad on the floor and it's freaked her out again, and she heads for the door. She says she's going to tell the police.

You pick up the gun and fire it at the wall.

"What are you doing?" she asks.

"Buying us time."

You need to get control of this, somehow. You can't change what's happened, but you can change how it ends.

"Time for what? I don't understand. I don't understand, Brendan, I've got to – "

"Let's go downstairs. Come on, yeah?" You pocket the gun, and you steer your sister down the staircase. "Good girl. It's okay, it's..."

Saying it was an accident isn't going to work. Cheryl couldn't accidentally pick up Walker's gun, and accidentally leave home with it and bring it to the club, not as far as the police are concerned. Premeditated murder, that's what they'll stick on her, and that means life. You're not going to let that happen to your baby sister.

You take her to the toilets and tell her she's got to wash her hands and her arms. She stands at the sink and you run the water for her, and you don't think she knows why she's got to do it but she's too deep in shock to question it, and you turn to leave her while she does it.

"Don't go. Where are you going?"

"I'll just be outside." You need some quiet.

Ever since the day you first laid eyes on your little sister, and she looked up at you like you were someone, you've tried to protect her. There were times when you took her for a ride – when you were short of cash and your life was a mess of shame, and you followed her to England to see if you could get a share of her good luck for once; maybe deep down inside, you figured she owed you – but when it mattered, you've always stepped up, and that's what you've got to do now. You are going to take the blame.

There's a hammering on the street door.

"Brendan! Brendan, let me in." It's Steven's voice, and he sounds panicky. "Look, I've just heard gunshots, two of them. Look, I know you're in there. Cheryl, are you in there? Please."

You say nothing, because what can you say? You can't tell him what has happened, because he mustn't be involved, and you can't tell him what you're doing because he'd stop you, wouldn't he? He'd think your life was worth as much as Cheryl's, because for some reason that you still can't fathom, he loves you.

You feel sadder than you've ever felt in your whole life.

You listen until he goes quiet, and then you go back to the toilets. Cheryl is still washing her hands. She looks at you in the mirror, and she says she's sorry. You think she means for killing your dad, for landing you in this mess: you think maybe the penny has dropped and she's realised what you're going to do for her. But it's not that. What she's sorry for is for not seeing what Seamus was doing to you when you and she were children together. You don't want to have this conversation, though; you've had enough pain and you don't know how much more you can stand.

You tell her to keep washing the residue off, and she picks up the nail brush and starts scrubbing away at her skin, but she keeps on about your dad, asks you questions. Why didn't she see? Because you didn't want her to see. Why didn't you tell her? Because you love her, and you couldn't tell her a horror story that would rewrite everything she thought she knew about her world. When? It doesn't matter when, and if she knew when and if she knew how often, it would devastate her. But she won't let it go.

"Was I there, was I in the house?" she asks, and you don't answer. "I was, wasn't I?"

She was there, most times, the other side of the wall, and you were terrified of waking her. That's why you learnt not to scream, and you turned in on yourself, _One eight is eight, two eights are sixteen, three eights are twenty-four, four eights are thirty-two_. And your dad didn't have to put his hand over your mouth any more, and sometimes he told you that you were a good boy for that.

"Not all the time," you tell her.

"I was in the next bedroom to you."

"Please don't do this, please."

This is what you didn't want: her childhood taken apart and reassembled in the dark. You want her to stop talking, stop asking, stop realising, but she keeps on. She tells you that she used to be jealous of you, of the attention you got from your dad. "I wanted to be you, so badly," she says. "I wanted to be Daddy's favourite."

"If he was with me, it meant he wasn't with you. It's why I didn't run away." It's why you were so scared of waking her as she slept in the bedroom along from yours. As long as she didn't know about the world that your dad and you inhabited, she couldn't become a part of it.

Cheryl talks about a time at your nana's house, when your dad showed up unexpectedly and you changed in an instant. You remember it too. You remember the warmth going out of the sun, and the days and nights when the only thing you could think about was the one question, _When?_

There's not much time now. Steven will be worrying that it's you that's been shot, so he'll have called the police, and they'll be here soon.

The thought of Steven unsteadies you, and you try to keep the twist of emotion out of your voice as you say to your sister again, "I'll just be outside, okay?" and you go and sit on the stairs.

You can't live your life without him. Doing Cheryl's life sentence for her was never going to be how this ended; you think you've known it since you took the gun from her hand, but you're only now facing up to it. You can't spend the rest of this life separated from that man, the man you love and who loves you back. Better to be dead. And he'll be alright, won't he? He'll be safe when you're not there to bring trouble to his door. He'll get to see his kids again when Amy knows that you're out of the picture for ever. Without you in the way, maybe he'll find an easier man to love.

You dry your eyes on your sleeve.

_Indeed, under the law almost everything is purified with blood, and without the shedding of blood there is no forgiveness of sins. _Maybe your blood will placate God, and the confession of your sins will weigh in your favour, and he will cut down your years in Purgatory so that by the time Steven has lived his life and gets to Heaven, you'll be there to meet him and you'll at last be the man he deserves. You've run out of chances in this life, and your only hope is the next one.

You feel calm now.

No, not calm. You feel as if you are already dead.

Cheryl comes out of the washroom and sits beside you. You put your arm around her, and you sit in silence together for the longest time, until faintly in the distance, you hear sirens.

"They'll probably think Walker's come back to get us," she says.

"Probably, if they haven't found his body yet."

"You think he's dead?"

"I know he's dead, Chez."

"You know?" She looks at you for a few moments, then she says, "Oh." She has put two and two together.

This is who you are: you are a man whose sister doesn't blink when you confess a murder.

There is knocking again, this time coming from outside the fire escape door upstairs, and again Steven's voice calling out, "Brendan. Brendan." There could be anyone in here, anyone ready to shoot their way out, but he's still trying to come to you. His bravery astounds you, but it doesn't surprise you. Is that the last time you'll ever hear his voice? You remember the times you've heard him say your name like an incantation as you moved inside him, his head thrown back, his face a confusion of pain and pleasure. _Brendan. Brendan_.

The sirens have got closer, and you've heard vehicles pulling up outside the club. You think you hear a helicopter. This is not what Steven will have wanted when he called them – he'll have wanted help for you, an ambulance not an armed response team – but this is what you need.

The landline rings. You don't know what to do about that, even though your sister expects you to know. This is new to you, too, you tell her. Her big brother doesn't have all the answers. You stand up and walk to the phone, and you realise you can't answer it because if you start talking to them, this day won't end how you need it to. So you rip the cord out of the wall, and you turn back to Cheryl. It's time to tell her what's going to happen here, or at least, the part that she needs to know.

You tell her you need to get your stories straight before either of you talks to anyone. She's got herself together now, and she says she wants to go out there with the gun and tell them what she did. You tell her she'll get life if she does that, and she knows it but she still wants to do it because your dad is dead because of her.

You've got to make her see.

"You got your whole life ahead of you. It's not being taken away, not like this, not today." You see her strength leave her again, and she's the little girl again who turned to you to sort it when someone at school called her names, and you crouch down in front of her and stroke her face. "Hey, don't cry. I can fix this."

"You can't. I killed him."

"No you didn't."

"I did." She doesn't understand what you are telling her.

"I did," you say. "Do you know what unconditional love is, Chez? Unconditional love is standing in front of somebody and taking a bullet for them. Taking the hit. I'm taking that bullet for you."

Putting yourself in the way of a bullet is not so hard, if you love someone enough.

"No. You can't do that, I can't let you, Brendan. All the things he did to you, and now you're going to be put in prison? It's not fair."

"Nothing's fair. None of this is fair. What he did to me ain't fair. You finding out about it the way you did, and walking in here and seeing what you saw, that ain't fair either. But we got to make the best of it now, okay, and that means doing this my way, not Walker's, not Dad's, not the police's way. My way."

"But it's – "

"Please, Chez. For me."

You go and get a cloth and then you sit down at a table and take out the gun. You empty the remaining bullets out of the magazine and put them in the pocket of your jacket: you won't be taking anyone with you when you die, not after what you did to Peter the last time you tried to kill yourself, and you need to make sure that when you're gone, people will know that you wouldn't risk taking an innocent life. People? Steven. Cheryl. Your boys.

You clean the gun with the cloth, and you tell Cheryl clearly what the story is. She heard a shot, found you standing over the body with a gun in your hand. The second shot was to stop her running off and calling the police.

She argues, says she won't be able to live with herself after what she's done, but you tell her she's stopped that man hurting any other kid. She's made the world a better place. She keeps arguing though, and time is getting short. You're not sure how long they give you in these situations before they try and come in, and if that happens you'll have no choice but to surrender because you can't make them open fire with Cheryl in the way. So you need to get this done, on your terms, without much more delay.

Cheryl tells you she's not going to let you die in prison, and you tell her, "I'm not gonna die in prison, never gonna happen."

"You can't protect me for ever."

You lose it then, and scream at her, "Yes I can. Yes I can. I can't let him win, okay?" You try to pull back your anger, and you get up and tell her that you're in this situation because of what your dad did to you, "And we were so close, weren't we? All of us, we were so close, you, me and Steven, we finally got it right, then what happens?" Then what happened was your dad turning up. Him and Walker, they're getting what they wanted aren't they? They're laughing at you from beyond the grave because they think they've taken your sister from you, they think you can't protect her any more. But you're not going to let them win.

You've scared Cheryl a bit, you think, but if that's what it's going to take to get her to go along with what you want her to do, it's a price worth paying. Only it hasn't worked, and she's still fighting against your plan even though it's what's best for her, as if she thinks you want things to be this way. But you don't want this, you tell her. You don't want this. You just wish –

You try a different tack, tell her that you should have been locked up long ago for the things you've done. She must know that: she caught you sawing a dead body into pieces, for fucksake. And she knows what you did to Steven, or some of it at least.

You get a flashback out of nowhere to that time you sat with Steven and watched _Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid_ together, and when he got disappointed afterwards because there was no happy ending, you said to him, _I guess they had to run out of luck in the end_.

You say to Cheryl, "It just... catches up with you in the end, doesn't it?"

She tells you she's not a little girl any more. You try to stop her saying any more, because it hurts, and you're tired, and you don't want her to remind you that she knows now what's been hidden inside you all this time, but she comes to you and carries on. "I'm not that little girl any more," she says again, "Who's in the bedroom next door to you, okay? She is all grown up, and she can look after herself."

She's earnest and determined, but by the end of her sentence she's breaking again, and you love her and she's breaking your heart. You hold her face, and you're gentle when you tell her that she's got Nate to look after her now, a whole life ahead of her and it is not going to end before it gets started.

"And you and Ste?" It seems like she's only just thought about that.

"Oh." You close your eyes, and even now the thought of him lightens your darkness. "So close."

You felt like you were getting through to Cheryl but now that she's thinking about you and Steven being torn apart, it's back to square one and she's refusing again to go along with your plan. You don't know what else you've got that will change her mind – but then you do. You didn't want to face her with this, but you're running out of ideas and you're running out of time, and so you tell her that you killed your nana.

"No," she says. "No. No, she died of cancer. She died of cancer, nobody killed her."

"I killed her, Chez. I'm sorry, okay, but it's the truth. So whatever happens now, I deserve it, I deserve what I've got coming."

"Why, Bren? Why would you... why would you do that to our nana? Did she ask you to, is that it? Did she ask you to put her out of her misery?"

"I wish it was that." You doubt you'd have the courage to do that, though, or the compassion.

"Why, then?"

"Because she knew. I found out that she knew, about Dad, about what he... what he was."

"Nana did? Not when we were kids, Brendan, or she would've – "

"She knew all along." You steer your sister back to the stairs and she sits down again. "I'm sorry, Chez."

"She knew, and she didn't say anything?" Cheryl seems numb, as if nothing you tell her now would surprise her.

She tells you she thinks that if you both go out there with the gun and tell the police what your dad was doing to you, they'd believe you. She must think that that will make everything okay. She must think that they will overlook the fact you'd kept the gun and that your dad was shot in the back. She must think that you want the world to know that at thirty-two years of age, you weren't man enough to stop your father from trying to rape you. And you're happy for her to think these things if it means that she will let you do this. You are going to do what she wants, you tell her, but on your own: "You weren't involved."

"Brendan..."

She looks lost and frightened. You take off your jacket and put it around her shoulders.

"It's time."

"No. Not yet."

You squat down in front of her, hold her hands, tell her it's going to be okay, everything's going to be just fine. Sometimes, love makes you lie.

"I love you," you tell her, and this is the truth that matters. "I love you more than you'll ever know."

"Brendan..."

"You were the only one that never let me down." Sometimes, love makes you lie. "The only one."

"I love you too."

You close your eyes and hold on to those words. You have been loved. _I love you, and you love me. That's all that matters. _

Cheryl asks you what's going to happen now, and you tell her it's nothing for her to worry about. She's to sit there where she is, and not follow you up. You make her promise.

It's time.

You stand up.

"Well, you know I'm not one for goodbyes, so I'm just gonna go up there."

"Brendan... I'm sorry."

"Don't."

"I'm sorry for not being a better sister." Tears are running down her face again, and you feel your chest tighten with pain. She thinks she wasn't the sister that you needed, but when you were a child and your life was spent waiting for the next horror to happen, she was the one good thing that you had, the one thing that mattered.

"Oh, Chez. You're so much more."

You hear someone shouting over a loudhailer outside.

Okay.

You walk up the stairs past Cheryl. You turn and take one last look at her, and she looks up at you and says, "Bye," and you smile at her then keep walking. You glance across at your father's body, half expecting it to be gone and for this to turn out to be one long nightmare; but it's lying there still.

You stand for a moment facing the door, where you stood a few hours ago and Steven kissed you and told you that after today, you and him would get your happy ever after, and you remember something else you said to him after you watched that old film. You told him that it was a happy ending in a way for Butch and Sundance. _Out in a hail of bullets, _you said to him, _Better than rotting in jail_. He didn't buy it. It wasn't the ending he wanted, and you wish with all your heart that you could have given him the happy ever after he deserved.

You're cold with fear. You don't want this, but you want the alternative even less, so you take a breath, and you push open the door and you step out onto the balcony.

There is noise and there are floodlights. Jesus, there really is a fucking helicopter. You close your eyes for a moment, and you feel as if you are the calm at the eye of a storm.

There's the voice over that loudhailer again, "Put your hands behind your head and get down on your knees." And then there's another voice, "Brendan!" and you look across the street and Steven is there behind the cordon. He looks terrified. You didn't want him to see this – you thought he would have been kept away. You didn't want any of this.

You put your hands behind your head. There are armed officers positioned in range of the club, and you think you can see a marksman on the building opposite.

"My name is Brendan Seamus Brady, from North Dublin, and this is my final confession." You're shouting above the noise of the helicopter.

The order comes again, "On your knees," but you ignore it.

"I am responsible for the murders of Daniel Houston, Michael Cornish, Florence Brady, DI Walker... and Seamus Brady, my father. None died that didn't deserve to die."

"On your knees."

_The son shall not suffer for the iniquity of the father, nor the father suffer for the iniquity of the son._

Through the open door behind you, you hear Cheryl's voice, desperate. She's coming up the stairs and she's trying to tell the police that the gun isn't loaded. She must have found the bullets in the pocket of your jacket, seen that the gun was gone, and realised what you were planning.

And then Steven is breaking through the cordon and trying to run towards you, and he's pleading, "No, please. Please, no." A police officer grabs him, and when he shouts again, "_No,_" the pain of it rips through you.

"In the next life, Steven." He can't hear you, but he knows. He knows you better than anyone.

You twist around and slam the door closed before Cheryl can get to it, and as you turn back you pull the gun from the waistband of your trousers and aim it at the marksman.

You don't hear the shot when it comes. You don't feel it either, only the force of it as it fells you. The noise of the helicopter recedes into a background drone, and the last thing you're aware of – the only thing – is one man's voice arrowing through the cold air, crying out, _No. No. No._


	23. Chapter 23

**Note:** This is the final chapter. Thank you to everyone who has read it, and thank you to everyone who has reviewed it, including the guest reviewers who I couldn't thank personally.

* * *

_I ain't dead._

That's what you remember thinking when you came round on the balcony of the club. _I ain't dead_. You must have passed out when the bullet hit you, but not for long because when you woke up it was just the police that were with you, yelling at you and searching you and cuffing you before they let the paramedics come near.

You are in a hospital bed now, and it's morning, and the little sleep you've had has been drugged and broken, and you're trying to piece together your memories of the night into some kind of timeline.

You're not dead, but you're meant to be: your death was the one piece of control that you thought you had, but it looks like God has other plans and wants your time in Purgatory to be spent on Earth.

You remember thinking, _I ain't dead_, and you remember crying out, _No_, and it sounded like an echo. You think you passed out again in the ambulance, because you remember coming out of unconsciousness again, someone saying, _Brendan, can you hear me?_ And when you opened your eyes it was one of the paramedics, a woman older than you, and she was holding your hand, and the vehicle was swaying as it sped. Next you remember being wheeled on a stretcher into A&E, your shirt being cut off you. There were injections – an anaesthetic, you think, but you don't think it was a general one because you think you can remember them doing whatever they had to do to your arm, digging around in the wound, stitching it. It didn't hurt, but you felt it.

You remember wondering why it was your right arm that was shot, when the gun was in your left hand, and then having a moment of panic here in this bed when you couldn't move your left arm either, before realising it was handcuffed to the frame at the side. The marksman was in front of you, you remember, and maybe if he'd aimed at your left arm as you pointed your gun at him, his shot would have gone through your body and killed you – and that's not the outcome the police would have wanted. You take a different view.

You don't think it's the anaesthetic that is still making you feel doped up; that's worn off by now. You think it's the painkillers, and you reckon they're dosing you up on them to keep you docile, but you won't be taking any more of them because you need to be able to think clearly.

There have been police officers stationed around the ward all the time since you got put in here after the doctors patched you up. Each time you've woken from your dream-filled sleep – dark dreams that make your heart rattle and your mouth dry – you've seen them through the slats in the blind or the porthole in the door, standing or pacing out there; sometimes staring in at you. These are just plods, though, and there's been no sign so far of any detectives wanting to question you. Maybe they want to do some homework on you first, or maybe the docs won't let them yet. Either way, you're glad of the delay, because when you made your confession last night you never thought you'd have to face talking about any of those five deaths in the cold light of day.

You had a conversation with a nurse who came in to do your obs first thing this morning, before you fell asleep again. _Your sister's arrived, she's asking after you_, he said. You asked, _She okay?_ _Can she come in?_ But there was a copper standing at the nurse's shoulder and he said no. _No visitors_. At least you know that Cheryl must be sticking to the story you made her agree to, thank God, or she wouldn't be here, she'd be at the police station, probably in a cell. She is allowing you to protect her from your dad one last time, and that knowledge will sustain you in the years that stretch ahead.

Another memory comes to you of that conversation with the nurse, and as it comes, a cry of pain heaves out of you and leaves you gasping. He is here: Steven is here. _She's got someone with her_, _don't worry_, the nurse said, and you told yourself it must be Nate – and that's a good thing, you are depending on Nate to look after your sister – but then the nurse said, _Your boyfriend. He's been here all night, poor love_.

He's here. He's here, even though he heard you confess not just to the two murders you've told him about – the ones you carried out for the love of him – but to three more. He must wonder what breed of monster he's been living with, and yet he is still here.

You know what you've got to do. What you've got to do is, you've got to let him go. You can't live your life without him, but he's got to live his.

He's a survivor, you know that for a fact; and he's young, and his best chance is a clean break. Yours will be a life unlived, but his doesn't have to be and you won't let him put it on hold while he waits and wastes his golden years. So you will refuse to let him visit. He'll be better off, won't he? He'll be out of your dark world and free of the dangers that follow you, and Amy will allow him his kids again, so he'll have a brand new start and maybe he'll stand a chance now of getting a better life, one he deserves. Maybe he'll be relieved.

You lift your wounded arm and twist it until a raw pain shudders through it, but still your heart hurts more.

You close your eyes then, and you concentrate, and you remember. You remember how he looks at you, as if he thinks you're worth something, worth taking a chance on; you remember how he took that chance, over and over again, because he might be a scrawny little bastard but he has the courage of a lion. You remember his forgiveness.

You remember the life you put together, the two of you, precarious and cracked but more of a life than you ever dared to dream that you could have – and you'd have made it, wouldn't you? If that thing that happened yesterday hadn't happened, if you'd just gone and told Cheryl about your dad when Steven said you should, you'd have made it. You were so close.

He gave you a card for Valentine's – seems an age ago, but it was only five, six weeks – and you remember what he wrote inside it. _Your worth the wait. Love you_, and then a line of kisses until he ran out of space. You won't have him wait for you again, even if he wants to.

You wish you had given a card to him. There's a whole lot of things you wish you had done – or wish you hadn't – and they'll haunt you for the rest of your days, but you don't let yourself start thinking about them now. Now is for gathering up your memories of him, because they're all you've got left.

You remember how his blue eyes are sometimes grey – how is that even possible? – and you remember the eyelashes that frame them. You don't remember when eyelashes became a thing that you gave a fuck about, but you know that they did, and you do. You remember the sensation of them spiking against your lips, and the taste of the tears on them. You remember all the tastes of him. You remember what his cock is like in your mouth, how alive it feels, how it's at your mercy and you're in its power. How its heaviness takes you by surprise every time as it weighs on your jaw or in your fist.

You remember the contours of his back beneath you as you lie on him; how his shoulder blades sharpen and jut into your chest as he reaches behind himself – behind you – to grab your arse or the back of your thigh.

You remember him sitting and reading, his finger following the words across the page. You remember him frowning in concentration, and you remember that, as you watched him, your love for him was almost more than you could bear.

You remember how beautiful he is.

You remember those things about him. You always will.

:::::::

You didn't think you were ever going to see him again. Even if the police weren't banning anyone from visiting you in here, you had made the decision anyhow. It's better for him, and it's better for you.

No visitors, they said, but when he comes barging into the ward it feels as if it was always going to happen. This is Steven Hay, and he's a contrary little fuck; always has been.

He's wide-eyed, and he's been crying, and he's still in the clothes he was in yesterday when he kissed you and told you you'd got nothing to be ashamed of, and that you would get your happy ever after.

You smile at him, at the inevitability of this. The odds were always against you: you and him, you were always outnumbered. You want to comfort him, but there is no comfort and in any case you can't, because you want him to want to leave you, and because if you start to let your feelings show, you will crumble, and that's not what you want his last memory of you to be.

He comes to you, stands for a moment, and then leans to embrace you but you stop him, and for a change he does what he's told and straightens back up. He tells you he didn't think you were going to make it, and he looks at where your wrist is handcuffed to the side of the bed, and he tells you that you shouldn't be here. You wonder why he would say that, when he knows what you've done. You wonder if Cheryl has told him the truth, and the reason he thinks you shouldn't be here is that he knows about the murder you didn't commit. And then he looks up and you follow his gaze, and Cheryl is there the other side of the window. She looks pale and haunted, her eyes red with crying. She mouths the words, _I love you_, and you nod your head, and she goes away with DI Bulmer.

You and Steven look at each other, and you wait for him to tell you that he knows. He's waiting too, for you to come clean, but in the end he's the one who speaks first.

"Well, are you gonna say it, or am I?"

"She told you, then."

"I worked it out, didn't I, then she had to tell me, or..." He looks disorientated, as if the world is spinning around him and he's got nothing to hold on to. "Why did you tell them about all them other ones, Brendan? I don't understand, you just made it worse. You don't want to go to prison, I know you don't – it nearly killed you before, so I don't understand why you... I don't understand."

He hasn't realised that you wanted the cops to kill you. You hope he never does, because now it seems to you that you were a coward to try it, and although prison to you is a worse fate, you think that your suicide may have been crueller to him.

"I can't let my sister go to prison. I've done plenty that deserves it, you know I have, but Cheryl... she's a good person. You can see that, Steven, yeah?"

"You're a good person, though."

"Steven, I ain't, I'm – "

"But you didn't kill your dad. All them years, you didn't do it, right, but as soon as Cheryl finds out what he did to you, she does it. It's her. It's her."

"You and Cheryl, you've made enough excuses for me in the past. Just... let me get this right, yeah?" You tell him that no sister has ever sacrificed as much as yours has for you, and so she's going to get the happy ending she deserves, but as you say it you remember the happy ending you were meant to be getting with Steven. You hope that if he feels the knife twisting in him as it's twisting in you, he's as numb by now as you are. You tell him flatly that this is the way it's got to be, and when he turns away, his face in his hands, you know that he's anything but numb. "Let's not waste any more time," you say, because it's decided and there's no point talking about it any more when this is the last chance you'll ever have to talk about anything.

"What has she ever sacrificed, Brendan, eh?"

Steven is angry now, and you want him to understand that you're not leaving him lightly.

"She... When you kill someone, Steven, you don't just... It's with you, for life, okay? You see their face, it comes back to you, what you did. It's like... it's like flashbacks, you know, or when you're asleep, you're dreaming and they just... You know when you wake me up when I'm having a nightmare? That's not always... not always about what my... about what someone's doing to me, it's sometimes about what I've done, see. And when it's someone you..." You think of your nana, and how you used to love her, and how although you hate her, there's love there still. "When it's someone Chez loved that she did it to, it's gonna stay with her, she's gonna spend her whole life remembering and feeling guilty. And she's gonna have that because of me. She did it for me, Steven. She's sacrificed her... her peace."

"She didn't have to do it, though. You didn't do it, so why did she have to?"

"He was... When she walked in, my dad was... he was attacking me."

"What?" Steven comes and sits on the chair next to your bed.

"I was on the floor, he'd got me down, I..." You're supposed to be staying calm for him, and you force your breathing to steady. "She did it to stop him. She saved me, Steven. And now I'm saving her."

His eyes fill with tears, and you want to look away from him but you can't, you need to imprint his picture in your mind while you've got him, even though all you can see is his pain.

He brightens then, and he says, "If you tell the truth, right, tell them she did it to protect you, she won't get long, will she? Then you wouldn't have to go away."

"She had the gun. That's premeditation, the way they'll see it. I can't take the risk, Steven, not with my baby sister. And there's the others, you know, the other ones I've held my hands up to. No point her and me both getting put away."

"No, but – " He's shaking his head, either not getting it or not wanting to.

"But you'll be okay, boy, yeah? You'll be okay." You're telling him, and you're telling yourself. "You'll get to see your kids now, maybe get them back living with you, it's gonna be..."

"I want you, though."

"Steven – "

"I'm gonna wait for you, right, you know that, don't you?"

"No." You take a breath, and you tell him. "When they cart me out of here, that's it. You and me – "

"No. Right, you listen to me for once." He's fierce, and he's in your corner, and he's breaking your heart. "I'm gonna be there at the trial, any court appearances – "

"No you're not."

"Yeah, I am."

"No." Cruel to be kind, isn't that what they call it? All it feels is cruel, but you've got no choice.

"I'm gonna come and see you inside as much as they'll let me." There's panic in his voice and in his eyes.

"I won't let you." Your voice is gentle, but your words are not. "This is where it ends, this is where it has to end, Steven. I'm going away for life. You gotta live yours."

"No," he says, and he gets up and goes over to the doors, and he stands with his back to you but you know he's crying, and you don't know what to say. His jacket is oversized on him, and he looks slight and fragile. His words lash out at you, forced out between sobbing breaths, and you want him to lash out if it makes it easier on him now, if he's got someone to blame_. _"Do you even know what love is? Because I don't think you do, otherwise you wouldn't walk into my life, let me fall in love with you, then leave. It's not fair..." He can't go on for a moment, and you listen to him catch his breath. "Not fair." And he's right, there's nothing fair about this, not for him. He's still facing the doors, and you think if he turned around, if he said all this while you could see his face, you wouldn't be able to hold it together any more. He asks you if you want him to have people telling him for the rest of his life that he's better off without you – but he is, isn't he? That's what you're depending on, the hope that when he's free of you he'll find a life that's safer, happier, _normal_. Only, he says, "I've lost the kids, so you're the only thing I've got left now, but... it's enough. Because before I met you, I didn't even know who I was, but I do now, and that's thanks to you."

You never knew that. You never stopped thinking that if you'd turned the clock back to August 2010 and gone to Barcelona, or London, or Liverpool again or anywhere else but a fucking nowhere village in fucking Chester, Steven would have had a better life than the one you led him. And yet he's telling you this: he's telling you that you are _enough_. He is _thanking_ you.

You've got to protect him, and yourself, because this is happening and it's out of your hands now, and you mustn't break, and he mustn't see that you're broken. _One eight is eight. Two __eights are sixteen. Three eights are_...

He turns around, and you look at him, and he's just a boy but he's more of a man than anyone you've ever known.

"You can't leave now, cos we're just getting started, aren't we?" he says. You look away. "And I know how hard it was for you to tell me about your dad but you did, because me and you, we can do anything, can't we?"

You used to think you were Superman, until you found out that there are things you can't do, things you can't stop. But you and Steven between you – he's right, isn't he? Sometimes it felt as if with him, you were invincible, a hero again. Just not this time.

There's a crackle of a police radio, and you see the officers through the blind, and they're getting their instructions and getting ready to move.

"So please, just tell the truth. I just don't understand how you can do this to someone that loves you as much as me." Steven's voice is tiny, and he breaks off to dry his eyes on his cuffs like a little boy. He has exhausted himself, and when he says, "I can't do this without you," it's not dramatic, it's not a plea, it's just a statement of fact. The truth of it shocks you, and you're scared for him.

He comes back and sits down again on the chair, and leans his arms on the side of the bed and rests his chin on them. You study his face, memorise it as if you didn't have a thousand pictures of him in your head already. There's a trace of stubble above his top lip. His eyes are bloodshot and raw from crying, and there are dark shadows under them. He's marked with scabs and bruising where you beat him, and you don't want to remember that but you know that you will, and you must, because it is part of the picture like it's always been, and when you find yourself raging against your life behind bars, the memory of his wounds will remind you why you deserve to be there. Even so, it's his beauty that grips you, flushed and snotty and scarred and tear stained though it is: his lips, his eyelashes, his cheekbones. Your sweetest friend.

He's calm now, but you're not, you can see DI Bulmer and a couple of officers approaching, and you know these are your final moments with Steven, and you were wrong to think if you acted cold it would be better for him, because he got upset anyway. And you're not going to let him go without him knowing what he means and what he will always mean even when you shut him out for life.

"Nothing's ever gonna change," he says, and he looks at you. "And I'm never gonna feel any differently about you."

"I'm never gonna feel any differently about you," you tell him, quickly and urgently now, and you will him to believe the utter truth of what you're telling him. "I promise you, okay?"

"Time to go, Brady." Bulmer has bent the rules for long enough.

"What? No." It's as if Steven didn't know that this moment was coming. You're telling him it's okay, it's okay, but it's not, and he starts pleading with the DI, "Look, he's hurt, he's been shot. Can he just have a couple of days to recover, please?"

"Mr Hay. He's a high-profile prisoner, he's more at risk in here."

"But he hates prison, don't you?" And he thinks this will make a difference, that they'll have mercy, as if somehow things will change and it won't be as bad as he fears. And he's just a lad, and you should be looking after him, and what have you done? What have you become?

"Uncuff him," Bulmer orders, "Get him ready to travel."

A nurse starts detaching you from the equipment, and a copper comes to unlock the handcuffs from the bed.

"Please, just don't touch him." Steven is panicking. The DI is telling him to stand back, but he doesn't. "I'm gonna tell the kids – " Steven says to you, and he doesn't reach the end of his sentence because he grabs your face in both his hands and he kisses you, and kisses you until he is ripped away from you, and you know in that moment that whatever happens in prison, and whatever happens if you ever get out, you will never kiss anyone else.

Bulmer and another officer have got hold of him, and he's fighting them as they drag him off, and he's saying, "No. No. No," and he's holding on to the end of the bed, and you're terrified that they're going to hurt him, and you shout at him, "Steven, let go."

Bulmer stays but the other officer manhandles Steven out of the ward, and he's clinging to the door, and you hear him calling out, "I love you."

"You changed everything, Steven," you shout, and you pray to God that he hears you. "Everything."

"Tell them what your dad did to you, Brendan."

You've lost sight of him, and another officer has gone to help the first one remove him, and you can still hear Steven shouting but you can't make out what he's saying in all the commotion, except one word, "Brendan," and that's the last time you hear his voice.

:::::::

The duty solicitor is the same waste of space they gave you when you were questioned about the assault on Kevin Foster, but you take him. You'll get your own lawyer in later on, but for now you don't want your head cluttered with advice, not until you've had more time to think things through for yourself.

Your final confession was meant to offer your soul to God's mercy at the moment of your death, not send you to prison for life times five. You were never meant to be sat in this interview room, across the table from a keen young DC and a slick DS, tape running in the expectation of the collar of their careers. The question is, are you going to give it to them? You think you might: you know you've got it coming. You deserve to pay for the things that you've done – not just for the things you confessed to last night, but for the things that weigh heavier on you because the victim was innocent. He's forgiven you, Steven has, but you can't forgive yourself, and taking your punishment is what you must do: you know that, because Steven has made you a better man.

Steven changed everything. You thought you couldn't love, and he changed that when you fell in love with him. You thought that you could never be a proper dad, but he trusted you with his kids and showed you that you could begin to learn how. You thought you couldn't let yourself be loved, and he changed that by refusing to give up on you. You thought you were condemned to live in the shadows, but he showed you that the world could be good again. He made you face up to your past, and who you are, and what you've done, after a lifetime of hiding from yourself.

Only, now you are wondering if he has changed something else. You were so sure this morning that your fate was settled, that you would accept your punishment and atone for your crimes with a lifetime behind bars; that it was the right thing to do after doing the wrong thing for as long as you can remember. But that was before Steven found his way in to that hospital ward to see you, and blew a hole in your certainty by laying bare to you the strength of his love and the depth of his hurt. Seeing him that last time – the things he said, the way he looked, his last _I love you_ – it brought home to you the reality of what you're facing, and shook your resolve to pay for your crimes. Sometimes when Steven changes you, he makes you stronger, but sometimes he weakens you.

If you go down for those five killings you will be inside for ever, and _for ever_ is the longest time, and you don't know if you can do it. _For ever_ is the length of time you're going to feel this way about Steven. _For ever_ is until you are in your grave.

You wonder if your confession up on that balcony was recorded. They film these things, don't they, these days? Major incidents like that, they film them, so there's every chance they've got a record of what you said – but if they have, they're keeping that piece of information to themselves.

"Brendan," the DC says, nicey-nicey, "Last night at Chez Chez nightclub you claimed that you were responsible for a number of crimes. Would you like to run through them again for us?" She waits for you to fill the silence, but she loses her nerve before you do, and fills it herself. "Is there anything you'd like to tell us, Brendan?"

"Yes," you say, and the officers sit up a little taller. "It's not Chez Chez," you say, pronouncing both words the French way like the DC did. "It's Chez _Chez_." You emphasise the _z_. "It's my sister's name, so."

You imagine DI Bulmer, sitting watching this on a monitor somewhere, cursing you. You smile.

Your sister will have told the police what you agreed about how Seamus died, but she won't say anything about any of the others – not even about Joel's stepdad, even though what she saw you doing to his dead body made her see you as a monster. She loves you, and she won't want this to go worse for you than it has to. And if they track Joel down, he won't breathe a word about Michael either: the kid's not stupid, and he knows that the moment he says anything, he'll be up to his neck himself. You trust that even though things ended badly between you, he knows you well enough to know that you wouldn't implicate him in your confession, and so he won't let them panic him into getting his defence in first. He'll sit tight til they give up.

As for Danny Houston, nothing has changed there. If there was any evidence against you they would have found it by now, and where Warren Fox is right now he won't want to get himself a reputation as a grass. He's a big lad, can look after himself, but if he was known as a police informant he could never stop looking over his shoulder. Besides – like father, like son – he can't pin it on you without making himself an accessory. All the police have got is your confession, and if you play dumb over that, they've got nothing. Same with your Nana Flo: they've only got your word for it that her death was anything other than natural causes, and the old woman's body was burnt to ashes six months ago.

You wonder about Walker. Did the train driver see anything? If he did, you think you would have heard about it by now. If he didn't, it could just as easily have been suicide as murder. Steven knows about it, like he knows about Danny, but there is nothing that would stop him from protecting you. Nothing.

"Mr Brady." It's the DS this time; you like the passive-aggression of the _Mr_. "What would you like to tell us about the murder of Daniel Houston?"

Looks like they were paying attention last night, then.

"No comment."

They press you – they must have dug out the file on that murder, because they know the dates and locations to ask you about, and they know all about your business association with Danny – but you say nothing about his death, and eventually the deadbeat solicitor wakes up and says, "My client has the right to decline to answer any questions."

The DS shuffles his paperwork, brings out another folder, but all that's in it is a single sheet of paper, and he says, "Michael Koresh – what would you like to tell us about him?"

They've got the name wrong, so they haven't joined the dots yet, and maybe they never will if you don't give it to them. It's even possible that Michael was never even reported missing – his missus and his son were better off without him, and who else did he have that would give a flying fuck about him? Without a name or a time or a place, the police wouldn't know where to start.

"No comment."

The sergeant closes the folder, which is obviously the DC's cue.

"Florence Brady was your granny, wasn't she, Brendan?" This one is still playing the nice cop. "She was your dad's mum, is that right?"

"Yes." She was your dad's mum, and she knew what her son did to you, but still you cried when she died. You baked cakes with her – why are you remembering this? – and she'd give you the wooden spoon to lick. Always she'd give it to you, not to your sister. You remember the graininess of the sugar in the pale batter, and your nana's hand resting for a moment on the top of your head, and you remember you felt safe. The smell of baking filled the old house, but when you call it to mind now another memory pushes out the old one, and it's of a different kitchen, where you stood with Leah and Lucas. It was the only time you've made a cake since you were a child; and you rested your hand for a moment on the top of Leah's head, and she was safe.

And then you remember another kitchen, where it wasn't a cake that was baking, but bread.

"Brendan?" The officer looks as if she thinks she's getting somewhere. "What's upsetting you?"

You realise there are tears in your eyes. You wipe them away fiercely with the back of your hand, and you say, "She was my nana."

"Why don't you tell us about how she died?"

"No comment."

The DS bangs his hand down on the table; the DC jumps more than you do.

"Simon Walker, Mr Brady. Anything?"

You smile.

"No comment."

They've got a lot to ask about Walker, endless questions about his vendetta against you, about his threats to your family, about his kidnap of Steven and Cheryl and of you and your dad. Their angle is that it would be understandable if you felt you had no choice but to take the law into your own hands after the police failed you.

You don't bite.

"We have a body, Mr Brady." The DS is pissed off now. "The body of Seamus Brady, your father. And we have a gun with your fingerprints on it. We've got the lab looking at the forensics taken from your hands and your clothing, and we think they'll identify firearms residue from the murder weapon. So, Mr Brady, what would you like to tell us about that? About your dad?"

This is the one they can have.

"I shot him."

:::::::

You lie awake long into the night, thinking hard about what in God's name you're going to do – whether you're going to confess to everything and add a string of charges to the one of murdering your dad, and inevitably get sent down for ever, like you know you deserve – or to brazen it out and fight anything else they try and make stick. Do that, and you might get away with just one life sentence. _Just_.

You are no closer to making a decision when exhaustion overcomes you, and you sleep.

It's not your dad that you dream about, or your crimes, or hospital, or prison. It's Steven. It must be, because when you wake up and before you open your eyes and remember where you are, you could swear his arms are around you, his breath on your neck, his ribcage falling and rising against you gently as he dreams a dream of his own. The sensations dissipate as your reality returns, and you wonder how many weeks or months or years it will be before your dreams of him become less vivid, the details of him less crystal in your mind.

You don't know what the time is, but the rectangle of sky that's visible through the high, barred window in your cell, is black.

You push the cover off you. It's hot in here, but it has nothing to do with the weather. It was the same when you were in prison two Autumns ago, there was a constant artificial heat and you think it's what they do to sap the inmates' energy and keep them tame. The seasons are all the same in places like this; it's Spring outside, but you won't see it.

It was a Summer when you chose Steven, and you spent it closing in on him in tightening circles, and sweated through the short nights imagining what you would do with him. Another Vincent, you wanted, but tougher, or a Macca but more alone; but what you found was something new, something more than you knew existed.

Another Summer, you thought you had him again: you got a taste of what you could have had, but you weren't ready and you couldn't hold him. And then last Summer – your last Summer – he was someone else's.

One Summer. Just one. Couldn't God have granted you that? One Summer when you're with him. One Summer, when the days are long and the sun beats down, and it's too hot to touch him but you do it anyway, because there's no resisting him – not when he glows with heat and he's supple and ripe and languidly carnal.

One Summer, when you get drunk with him in the open air, and you don't care who sees you as you stop and kiss on the way home, and he's laughing as you kiss him, and you can taste coca cola on his lips. And by the time you're home his clothes are sticking to him, but not for long, and then it's you that's sticking to him and sliding on him, and there's a slick of sweat to be licked from his spine, and a shower to be shared. One Summer, when his skin is like honey. One Summer, when the heat stops you sleeping so you lie side by side, your knuckles brushing the back of his hand, and you listen to him chatter about nothing, and everything.

One Summer, with nothing to hide from and no one in the way, and you catch sight of him in the street and he smiles at you in the sun, and he glitters. One Summer, just one, when he's yours.

You were born into darkness, though, you and him – born and raised in it – and in the dark corners you learned that what can't be changed must be endured. You came together in shadows and cellars, hiding from the light.

It was Winter when finally you found each other, on a bridge under the stars in the cold, clear air. It was Winter when for the first time in your life, you were happy, and the nights were long and filled with him, and the short days felt like borrowed time, but when the sun shone, it shone brightly. Maybe asking for a Summer is greedy, when you've had all that.

There's still no sign of dawn in the sliver of sky beyond the window, but you know that the darkness won't last for ever. You believe – and you have to believe it or you won't survive – that one day when you wake, it will be light again, and the world will be beautiful, and the arms around you will be real. You believe it, because of Steven.


End file.
